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 is about…
Fiction
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 Bellísima…
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 eroticized find…
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 Camándula man…
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. “Papi ain’t…
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, all my fears…
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 underwear…
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 bumper-to-bumper…
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 beginn…
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 with…
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 tightly and sa…
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 one end o…
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 environm…
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.” “For god’s sake i…
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 bus window…
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 problem, Sir?” “…
Photo: Rachel Lees / Unsplash A couple in their kitchen. Either the man or the woman speaks first. We should make sure they’ve inspected the car. I guess they probably only rent car…
Photo: Zhenyu Luo / Unsplash Down the first twist of stairs and Josie hears she is not alone, like hearing a tree in the wind beyond her bedroom window. The old man: splay-legged before his door like…
Photo: Mark Eder / Unsplash Margherita was tiny and hunched. She had light eyes, and always—summer or winter—wore a shawl she kept closed on her chest with her hand, as if clutching a necklace. She l…
Painting by Sara Jimenez In this story by an indigenous writer from the southern Philippines, a crime continues to haunt a local’s thoughts. It had been some time since Lolo Bebe passed away…
Photo: Sarah C / Flickr She makes the little balls with extreme care, as if for a sphericity contest, and then she puts each one next to the other. This order, which she must disturb to fry them,…
Photo: Omid Armin / Unsplash A stalled train and shifting visage make for an eerie commute. I could’ve stayed in bed a little longer, but what for? Surely that would only make things worse.…
Photo: Cory Doctorow / Flickr What a world. In life we have to make choices, face the most loathsome decisions; and, there up ahead, all you see are forks in the road. Hang a left, or maybe a right.…
Photo: Victor Grabarczyk / Unsplash An encounter between a tonga driver and the “cruelty folks” seizes a university student’s attention on his way to class. Sometimes I remember strange thin…
Photo: Ray Hennessy / Unsplash In May 1974, in New York’s René Block Gallery at 409 West Broadway, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) carried out his performance “I Like America and America Likes Me.” Arr…
