“Anatomy of the mouth” by liverpoolhls is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
In the dentist’s chair with mouth wide open, a patient contemplates her tongue’s relationships to B6 or B7, how shade…
Fiction
Photo by Joseph Rushmore In the following story, the narrator imagines what role her family might have played in a race massacre—and the generations of silence that followed.…
Photo by Serj Tyaglovsky / Unsplash With two weeks of food and the outside world covered in cellophane, apartment dwellers under a stay-at-home order get to know their neighbors as things…
Photo by Olga Serjantu / Unsplash Whatever happened in the neighborhood, ‘Ubayd was said to be behind it. Disappearing water pumps and gas cylinders, broken streetlights, and fires in the fa…
Photo by Myrtle Schilling / Unsplash I’ve seen it more than once: the raised axe swings and chops into the last remnant; Lying still in the dirt is the moving, glowing crown. – R…
Meytar Moran, The Stage, from the Black Magic series (2014–2015), meytarmoran.com In a field near the Gaza Strip, a missile strike, visions, and onlookers searching for an explan…
Painted Cats by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 Hoping battles knowing in this three-act seduction (spoiler alert: there’s a cat in the story). 1. Try to seduce som…
“We Don't Care Broken Window Theory” by Zak MC is licensed under CC by SA 2.0 Old Acquaintance Having met by chance, they hugged. “Long time no see!” the men chorused. They caught up, exchan…
“I love you" by @Doug88888 / flickr People believe, Marie thinks, even when there’s no proof. You believe because you imagine. But is imagination enough to live by? Die. Th…
Photo by the camera is a toy / Flickr An artist of stillness, her life a dance of immobility, performs the art of losing in a plaza. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and the show…
Calle del Cristo, San Juan Antiguo, Puerto Rico. Photo by Nikita Castro / Unsplash After a hurricane, two young boys find some things, but not everything, changed. At house T24 of B…
Photo by Markus Spiske / Unsplash After multiple catastrophes and faced with the pandemic lockdown—the pain of fear, of austerity, and of abandon—a woman needing to feel loved and erotici…
Castillo San Felipe del Morro / Photo by Terry Ott / Flickr A woman, her caregiver, and a daily walk to the edge of a cliff overlooking an estuary. 1 I’ve told Cam…
Illustration by Tom Hart / Flickr After Hurricane Maria, in a hospital with no electrical power, a man seeks medical treatment for his father as the US president visits the city. “P…
Image: Tim Mossholder / Unsplash A daughter faces a dilemma when the coronavirus creates an opportunity. When I found out that the virus from China made its way to Puerto Rico…
Photo: dotpolka / Flickr A sofa, the site of a family’s history, receives and gives a second life. My parents conceived me on a sofa in a department store. My mother worked in the u…
Photo: César Couto / Unsplash Stuck in traffic during a downpour, a driver faces a peculiar dilemma. Juan Carlos saw the man die in the car to the right, in the middle of a bu…
Rosaura Rodríguez, La ciudad es salvaje (The city is savage) Catastrophes of biblical proportions lead one San Juan woman to the promised land: Orlando. [57]…
In the Karl Liebknecht House in Leipzig, Germany, thirty people of various nationalities are seated around an improvised table on the stage in the Events Hall, interpreters behind them, some wit…
Photo: Elia Pellegrini / Unsplash Over time you realize that the only thing you can do is to comfort. Before my grandmother passed, having already dwindled away, she would hold my hand tightl…
Photo: Oxa Roxa / Unsplash Looking for her dead wife, a woman finds an unusual bonsai with mythical connections and a few complaints. Laurel, without shoes, wandered aimlessly from…
Portrait number four from Second Skins Collection, photography by Miguel Vallinas Prieto In this Kafkaesque story, two startling discoveries follow the transformation of a man’s…
Photo: Mark Gunn / Flickr Papa received a scythe from a co-worker as a present. Mama is horrified. “A scythe in our house?” Papa wants to reassure her: “I’ve set it in the cellar.” “Fo…
Photo: Oxa Roxa / Unsplash The students noticed an opening at the bottom of the fence, a tear in the wires. On the other side of the fence was the outside, which they only saw from the bu…
Photo: cyclonebill / Flickr In this political satire, an innocent meal becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. The maître d’, who was called over by the waiter, asked: “Is there a proble…
