Gracile. An esoteric word, certainly. A thesaurus word if ever there were one. Gloria is gracile. Slender, small, compact. A pixie gold haircut and tanned cheeks. Twenty-two and suffering from recent disappointments reaped from a year abroad interning in Tanzania at the Jane Goodall Institute. Twenty-two, graduated with a biology degree, specialization in zoological sciences, […]
Fiction
Gracile
Gable’s Whiskers
by Jacob M. Appel
In Aldama’s nightmare, Robustelli severed an ear. They had the barbershop to themselves that afternoon—Bernal’s chair stood vacant between them—and customers crowded the benches along the window. It must have been a Saturday, because Aldama recognized several weekend regulars: Steinhoff, the florist from across the street; the twelve-year-old triplets whose mother insisted on distinct haircuts; […]
Incarnation by Katherine L. Wiegele
Milk. The American couldn’t remember the Tagalog word for milk. Latte, the damned Italian word, swarmed in front of her face like a distracting fly as she searched for the local word. She was standing, literally, in the middle of M.H. del Pilar Street, rooted like seaweed swaying in the pushy chaotic waves of Malate’s traffic. […]
Flowers for Jessica by Richard Thomas
The doctors had no answer for me, something wrong with her heart—that’s all that I heard, all they could hint at with their stone faces and cold hands, constantly checking their watches, places they needed to be. Except, now that Jessica was gone, there was nowhere I needed to be and nowhere I wanted to […]
Five-hundred Sirens by Jay Shearera
That night the moon was the thing, maybe even more than the sirens. It was laughing. That’s what I saw anyway. The same basic premise of the man in the moon, only here he looked like he was cracking up. A vague effect—at least at first—that leapt out at you like a corny cartoon the […]
The Garden, the Blunder, the Baby by Christopher Merkner
Sweet look there, the cardiologist liked to say, waving his hand toward something in the garden, the hydrangea, for example, and when pressed (Is it the silver Mopheads you like? the pale Oakleaf?) he would slip the question. I don’t care about that sort of shit, he’d say, and because he was a cardiologist and […]
After the Parade by J. R. Longfellow
This was when Carl had two cats. They weren’t his cats. The woman he’d been living with had gone to Colorado for what she called an “indefinite period of time.” Said she’d return when she wrapped her head around what the hell they were doing in Chicago. It was beyond Carl how living in one […]
Tana by Irene Jiménez (translated from Spanish by Catherine Nelson)
“I’ve been so committed to the fight for the homosexual cause,” Benjamin explained introspectively, “that I forgot to love.” Ursula, Tana, and Miguel sipped the soup in their spoons and then returned the utensils to their bowls. They looked at Benjamin with understanding smiles. No one had commented on the fact that he had come […]
List by Calvin Haul
“I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can’t stop them. They leave me—and I love them more.” —Maurice Sendak Because the spatial nature of words tends to limit themselves, and knowing full well that you will interpret every word I write with at least two […]
Home by Michael Czyzniejewski
This is what’s transpired the past seven weeks: My son Max started dating Brittany Schoenmeier, a cute girl he’s known since kindergarten, dating for two weeks before cheating on her with Avery Constantini, another cute girl he’s known all his life, making Brittany break up with him, but not hate him, because a week later, […]
