James Nulick
“What are you looking at? my sister asked in the loudest voice possible, the abruptness of it as shocking as hearing the metal-on-metal screech of ghetto brakes when one is entering a crosswalk. Jesus Christ, Nicole!?”
Mary Burger
“Story is, you come up over the rise and the coastal meadow spreads out in front of you all the way to the cliff, the grass bends in waves and the water beyond it is a steely rippling sheet.”
Denis Tricoche
“When me and Papi get home, Leo is half asleep waiting for us. He says, Veronica came by to give you something, but she told me I should only give it to you when you’re at your lowest. Not yet, I tell him.”
Yuliia Iliukha
Translated by Hanna Leliv
“A woman who learned how to live in the homes of strangers lost her own home twice. It all started in 2014. Weird thugs with tricolors; mad old women with golden teeth, tugging her clothes and spitting on her. She quickly wiped their spit away as if it could seep through her skin and poison her.”
John Gu
“When the offensive came, I was reminded of Mahmiin Andeyin’s words to me the previous winter: ‘Before the summer comes, they will start bombing again.’”
Iliana Vargas
Translated by Lena Greenberg and Michelle Mirabella
“‘Stop talking to me in French, Lucille, as if you had no clue who I was, or what’s going on. You’re the one who went to get me from the convent. You’re the one who paid for all the damage the Mother Superior and her following say I caused, even when you knew it wasn’t true.'”
Kelly Krumrie
“I recorded them in the kitchen, changing clothes, washing their hands, played the sound back, and they’d write it down somehow, rerecord it. The echoes under there had to be god.”
Juan José Saer
Translated by Will Noah
“In its essence, toponymy represents the first verbal constellation to spread over the tortuous surface of the universe, verbal projectiles that are launched by man’s codified breath and become lodged not in places themselves but in the maps that serve as their emblems.”
Afsana Begum
Translated by Rifat Munim
“Had anyone ever heard of the spirit of a discontented ghost wandering through the packed streets of an old book market when there were so many other places to haunt people? Just like there were bookworms, there were book ghosts, too.”
Michael Loyd Gray
“He’d come nosing around on Saturday afternoons, this tall, red-headed warden, because he’d taken a shine to my mother and pretended to recruit me for the conservation service. Even then, I suspected that was a front, but my mother and I were dazzled by his grin and jutting chin, a man full of the outward confidence a smart green uniform and holstered pistol on his hip bestowed.”
William M. McIntosh
“I know it was a long time ago and I know we don’t see each other or speak anymore, although we could, and I know you’ve got a lot in your life and so do I, and I know this sort of drifting apart thing is rather common and forgivable, but do you remember me? Do you think about your old life while you’re possessing my current one?”
Laura Zapico
“Micah called my name as I climbed the steps to the Oasis and he ran to catch up, sweating, his checked flannel shirt billowing behind him. I recognized him from my last rehab, the one with the low-rent organic meals and nonstop mindful meditation. We’d barely spoken there, but I’d felt his eyes on me in the dining hall and during Tai Chi, and I remembered how it thrilled me when I felt like a lonesome tumbleweed pinned against a rusted fence, blown and battered, miles from home.”
Bo Huston
“What follows are transcripts of interviews made sometime in the summer and autumn of 1983. I was so much younger then. I was sad, lonely, optimistic, radical (but a little too cautious to be radical). I took all the drugs that came my way, fucked with all the men who came my way … laughed a lot, but that was becoming a struggle.”
Matthew Roberson
“Out and out again into the car. He’s not driving. Not. He turns for the seat belt and reaches and then lets the woman lean over and take hold and pull it to close with a click. She’s driving, the woman.”
Blue Neustifter
“There were only two constants to the dreams: her and him. No matter where she was, no matter how lush or barren the landscape, he was there.”
Cástulo Aceves
Translated by Michael Langdon
“Two men appear at the door of the airport. The first of them is the client; the second, much older, an investigator. They feel the cold air of the country they are visiting, on a continent where they are foreigners.”
Vilde Fastvold
Translated by Wendy H. Gabrielsen
“In the institute corridors, people whisper that having sex in the field is something everyone does, but no one talks about. I haven’t asked anyone if it’s true because I’d rather console myself with the thought that fieldwork is messy and can’t be pinned down by ethical absolutes.”
Israel Bonilla
“Agónico’s childhood belongs to myth, and it is now irretrievable. We know with confidence that he was born in Visalia. All other information has been gleaned from his letters to Segura.”
J.G. Jesman
“Chitsanzo, whose name means “example,” is very pleased with his outfit for the wedding. He has no idea who is getting married, but the local saying is that, Ants don’t need an invitation to enjoy sugar.”
Marream Krollos
“I waited for Otis to knock on the door of 716, I knew I would recognize the knock. I stared at the door as if … my heart, my stomach, my limbs were bats sending sonar out the door, into the Riverhouse.”
Nikki Barnhart
“When my childhood was over, I moved out. There was a big, old house on the far end of town, convenient to nothing. No one wanted to go over there, much less live, but I could afford it, everything that it had to offer.”
Dale Peck
“The first man I was sexually attracted to was Luke Skywalker. The first man I loved shot one of his johns when he was fifteen. The first man I had sex with was my best friend in college.”
Marina Mariasch
Translated by Ellen Jones
“In relationships, everything that matters is hidden and should remain so for the benefit of all major stakeholders. Dirty laundry is a research tool that allows us to penetrate the deepest folds of the conjugal fabric.”
By Victoria Ballesteros
“In dreams, I glide past borders and through concrete doors to reach places I have never left. I fly over green picket fences and bougainvillea trees adorned with slivers of the past.”
Alvin Lu
Did the workmen who received the pieces carried by cart and mule know what they were doing? There would be, and still are, strict rules for feng shui. Did the delivery come with instructions? Or did the builders just go by their infallible memories?
Carla Bessa
Translated by Elton Uliana
A renowned businessman was arrested unexpectedly early this Friday, after an accident in which he ran over and killed a workman in the South Zone of Rio. According to the chief of police, the driver will be charged with manslaughter (where there is no intention of killing) and drunk driving.
James Warner
“I remember buying Guy Dieppe’s novel—at a bookstall beside the Seine, one spring afternoon—more clearly than I recall my first reading of it. It included some enjoyable phrases, which I now forget, but made no impression otherwise.”
Nina Schuyler
“Before she taped closed the box of Floor Polish Shine, she slid in her note, I miss watermelon. And with the bottle of Mold Killer, I miss pink tulips.
The notes didn’t harm anyone. Little scraps of paper, a message that there was more to the Cathedral of Desire than what met the eye.”
Stacey Levine
“Sherrie Gagel pushed through the throng toward the head branch librarian, declaring with a patchy pant: ‘May I ask you something Miss Stroke? I’ve wanted to for ages.’”
Laurie Stone
“I gave a man I loved a mug, a silk shirt, and a copy of Baudelaire. In time he became better at sex. After he left me, I saw him at a memorial service and wondered if he still had the shirt, the mug, the copy of Baudelaire.”