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The Room Next Door
FICTION — I never really knew Eric. He was the kind of neighbor you saw often but never truly saw—a blur of dark shirts and headphone wires, slipping down the stairs with his phone in one hand and a plastic bag of instant noodles or soda in the other. Always alone.
Naked
I’ll wear nothingbut my trembling desirethe wild beat of my pulsethe lingering whispers of my past.
I’ll wear nothingbut the ache of my lost love the sweet sigh of my first joy The ecstatic cry of happiness.
I’ll wear nothing but the fire in my eyesnaked in your...
Grandma
Her hands quiver
from sustained pressing of the beads.
When her voice starts to rise,
the light of the kerosene lamp amplifies
from an entirely lambent glow,
illuminating the details of
her room. Mound of frass
and dead winged
ants on the altar; archaic cross
nailed askew on a bole. Might these,
however...
Inverted Horizons
The sea and the sky
Swap their eternities
The waves with the clouds
And everywhere
Fishes fly birds swim
Farmers cast seines
Fishers sow seeds
Waterways counterflow
Waterfalls go into reverse
All of this unbeknown
To Siri Alexa and Cortana.
By the Brook
I
Nina’s eyes peer above the cover of a nameless book. She wasn’t reading, no. Her eyes are fixed on the distant figure of her mother sifting through a pile of old chattels left behind.
“Another river pebble. Your Lola really liked collecting the most...
The Quiet Animal
I couldn’t get off my mind, that morning when I was six years old, when my mother asked me to bury a dead animal. I held the carcass of a dead new-born pig, quiet inside the plastic bag. Its cold fleshy body was...
