Arjun Razdan – Once It Is Done
Once It Is Done Reader: Writer, write me a fabulous story. Pack it with all the surprise you can imagine, make characters nobler than those of yesteryears, make the men forthright and famous and let the women be as beautiful and intriguing as Cleopatra. Let each word explode a new universe. Let each chapter be […]
Cassandra Passarelli – Night Shift at the Palace
Night Shift at the Palace Eight o’clock. ‘‘Bienvenidos! Welcome. Bienvenue. Nice room with view of the Baie de Tanger?’’ ‘‘You want coffee? Come.’’ ‘‘Hashish? Ground zero.’’ We have no work but we walk briskly nowhere. Grizzled patriarchs in marchas. Bearded fathers in white jelabayas. Fat uncles selling sesame cakes. Boys throwing water on beggars. Waiters […]
Luke Tennis – I Worked as a Waiter
I Worked as a Waiter I worked as a waiter in a restaurant called the Gallery, but I kept screwing up the checks, undercharging, overcharging. Sometimes I brought out the wrong orders, and once I tried to convince a guy that what I’d brought him, pasta, was better for him than the veal he’d ordered. […]
Breathing Trouble
Five bottles of dollar-fifty beer had come and gone when I saw her glide into the bar and sit at a booth behind me. Above the bar, the Budweiser horses pulled their plastic wagons of beer into infinity. I saw her in my peripheral vision, smooth and solitary, wearing a white T-shirt tucked into faded […]
Kiko
Kiko says a broken vessel doesn’t cling to the remaining droplets, but I strive to believe it’s so. “Anything newly broken savors only the dew. It has nothing else to offer,” I explain, waving my tawny arms with the thick webs of hair in an angel’s arch above my chin. “I relinquished the dew when […]
