On Seeing a Phasma Gigas Photo by Michael Eisen 1 In adamant clarity, in an acrylic cube, the one called phasma or ghost, difficult to see on its native bark, compels and says I am, repels and says I am. Which camouflage is which? Stunned by extravagant repugnance, by alien symmetry, I study its mottled […]
Blood Flower Photo by kanegen Sometimes my gentle father texts me warnings or jokes, or waterbird photos from his walk around the lake in central Florida. Once, my father texted me what to do if an elephant charges me: watch its ears. If they are pinned back, apparently you have seconds before it attacks. Just […]
Provisions Photo by Pedro The courier asked if I was back but he knows I refuse to harvest. I only collect, marred by yellow wages and groves and writing waves of mercy, heat, or radio. I tend, in fact, to catch fractions to avoid storms of light, my fault lines. The courier relies on moths […]
One Bad Night in San José, Costa Rica Winner of the 2021 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction Selected by T. Geronimo Johnson Photo by Marco Verch Audio: Danny Theimann reads his work. 1. The mother In our neighborhood, minor drug dealers pay campanas to run through the streets and sing warning songs of the police. […]
The Spirit Cabinet Anthemion Her grandparents had spoken “a foreign tongue,” she recalled, but she couldn’t say which one. When I pressed for more, my grandmother would grow glum and dour, as if she were resisting prosecution. I took a picture of her the last day I visited her apartment. Her cat is in the […]
Scuttling and Creeping Photo by Image Catalog Through the dark one-way mirror, I watched a group of toddlers shoving squishy foam cars along a rug, their faces grim with concentration. Another group was piled in and around the lap of a sturdy woman reading a picture book. And in back, on a wooden loft, a […]
My father will spin his life into a series of anecdotes and stage-friendly one-liners. It’s a magician’s trick. First comes a sudden sparkle in the periphery, an old pickpocket move, though he uses it to protect his own pockets. Over there, he’ll point, and in a wink you’ll laugh and look away.
Photo by Christian Zeiser i. Vesper Leaving you to poke around the craft stalls I orbit the solar system maze, wander the icicle forest, the replica Houston skyline, disco the Technicolor floor with toddlers and carol around the fifty-foot tree. Before Jesus, the one from Rio with open arms, I stop to pray. At the […]
Photograph by Tiago Veloso I was a child when I learned from my father that his parents were once the tango champions of Zamboanga. I had never met them, and only knew what they looked like from pictures taken of their fiftieth wedding anniversary that my aunt Nancy had sent us from the Philippines in […]
We’d like to take a moment to address the violence against Asian and Asian American communities that has been rampant over the past year and that has recently culminated in a shooting in Georgia on Tuesday, March 16th. Eight people, including six women of Asian descent, are dead: Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, 33; Xiaojie Tan, […]