Fiction

Selma Rosita Morales works in the back of the store; her job is to count clothing. She stands at the entrance to the dressing rooms and greets customers whose arms…

The woman said, “Would you like Kool-aid?” and the boy said, “Kool-aid,” and she said, “Okay,” and the boy said, “Okay.” She said again, “Would you like Kool-aid?” And she…

My daughter, two-and-a-quarter, burns her comet’s trail around the problematic space of the sitting room, narrowly negotiating the adult terrain of armchairs, rugs, and bookcases. With both hands she flips…

They hadn’t meant to have a baby. After the miscarriages early on, they’d settled into what was his second marriage and her first, and she had been happy enough. Life…

We installed the weather station the day I found out I was pregnant. Of course I already knew I was pregnant, but on that day the little white stick took…

At 8:35 that Friday morning, my partner’s mother finished making her Martha Stewart farm breakfast while singing the Lord’s Prayer. She then took three matching plates from our cupboard and…

Maddie’s mother was missing. And, here she was in her parents’ kitchen preparing a meal, while the men made phone calls in the next room. Her father had steered her…

My mother looks like Sylvia Plath in that one photo they publish of the young poet over and over, on just about every book jacket, under every earnest blurb. The…

The bridge shakes. Four-year-old Emma screams. It is a rope bridge with wooden slats for flooring and it bobs and rolls like the deck of a small rowboat moored in…

Adelaida should begin preparing supper but instead she lingers at her kitchen window watching vultures. She thinks they are terrifying beautiful, their sinewy wings forming silhouettes against a rust-colored sky.…

As if it were yesterday, she sees herself sitting in the lobby, the cup of coffee curdling in her hand. Feels the soft wool of the cardigan against her flesh,…