Lisa Dickey is a longtime ghostwriter and author who has collaborated on seventeen nonfiction books, eight of which became New York Times bestsellers. Her clients have included celebrities such as Herbie Hancock and Patrick Swayze, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, and many others with diverse backgrounds, from CIA agents to business titans. Many of Lisa’s […]
As my mother grew older she became more confused and unhappy and mean. When she was most difficult, I would soften my response by beginning to write her eulogy; two lines in I would start to forgive her a little and, toward the end, completely. Once, during her very last days, in a rare lucid […]
[fiction] To the person who took my GOLDEN CREEPING JENNY PLANT at 2:13 a.m., I saw you on our lawn! That plant was a memory of my mother. I can’t bring her back but you can bring back my plant. We’ll leave the windows unwatched tonight so you can return it without shame. DO THE […]
1996 El edificio más alto en el mundo. In a primary school in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, an eight-year-old child stares at a picture in a textbook. Their third-grade geography class is studying a big city in the United States called Chicago. They have skyscrapers there. The biggest is the Sears Tower, which, the […]
Centuries of history consolidated in a single lecture, a fiery star. Our teacher did not make eye contact as she spoke. I do not think she could have if she tried. All the kids were staring down at the carpet, drawing imaginary lines with the tips of their fingers. She stared straight ahead, through the walls. Her words carried the weight of each body lost to the atrocity. That incalculable multitude, not even given the courtesy of a statistic. When those words fell upon us, our bodies became vessels of historical trauma and sunk below the surface of the earth.
Lengua de mi madre, have you forgotten me +++++in greenness of your green Havana palms, in your thousands of orchid +++++blooms, in woven shades of your mango trees, flamboyant trees stretching +++++like a brocade or aged fishing net? When did I lose what I never received from you? +++++Some part I’m missing or some part […]
She pauses in her slow crawl along the furrow that must yield beans, and wipes a dirty hand across her face. She squints skyward. The jets are in formation again. Practice. It must be practice. Please be just practice. She braces as the rush of the planes’ noise hits her. She pulls a handful of […]
‘A Totally Wild Idea’: The Writing and Realms of Eloise Klein Healy On a sunny September day in Sherman Oaks, California, a gray Portuguese water dog greeted me at the door of prolific poet and publisher Eloise Klein Healy. If it’s all right, I have some things to show you, Healy said as she […]
[translated fiction] Where was he coming from? The question lacked any possible answer. Other than “from home.” For the following reason: a cat never arrives anywhere, he returns. Each time I see him returning from his walk, I tell myself the same thing. That’s the feeling a cat always gives you. Even when he sets […]
[fiction] All the food is kept in the house kitchen. Yon and I, like all the kids but Symboline, aren’t allowed to go there. Symboline, the oldest of us all, brings out bread for children who’ve been nicest to her and flicks crumbs at the others. After she saw our first kiss the other week, […]
we, the grandmas practicing tai chi
in the public library, we the aunties gossiping
over mahjong and tea, we the pacific mall karaoke /
queens, we the tender queer who finds self care
in astrology, stakes their dreams on something bigger. /
we the kid who crosses out her poetry
so she can become a doctor.
A. Description The Work’s medium was oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, birthed one December day in 1960, Brooklyn. Boy child from brush strokes of Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father. Face framing wide-set brown eyes and wide refined nose. Our eyes are drawn to the thin line that divided his naked torso in […]
A sonic crack and the ball soars like a comet, like it might remain another white speck in the night sky, like it’s a guaranteed walk-off home run. Except that the left-fielder, who, till now, has appeared hobbled by the rumors of his impending free agency, is tearing towards the wall, not even glancing up […]
[fiction] I whizz by houses in my old neighborhood at such a speed that they are just a blur to me. The sirens are blaring from behind, getting closer and closer. I kick my piece-of-shit Dodge into fourth gear and push the accelerator to the floor. There’s a jolt and it feels like we’ve jumped […]
[translated fiction] “The wolf tone is a musical paradox. An atonality we suffer in the name of harmony.” One of the trees has bloomed early. In the park in front of the conservatory. Dabs of pink along a dark core. What are they called? Cherry blossoms, you’d say. You’re all grown up now. Later I […]
“You don’t say no to me,” my colleague said in a thick drawl. “This isn’t over.” The phone line went dead after the threat—his revenge to my rejection of his business proposal. I didn’t own or want a weapon, but that day I feared for my safety at work. The muscles in my jaw tensed […]
Driving home from the ranch across the high desert, Enzo measures the length of a coal train, setting the odometer at the caboose and racing westward toward the engines. Tess photographs lightening that cracks the sky. Eight-year-old Sophie sleeps in the back, wrapped in the sweetness of trust. Home in Los Angeles, Enzo needs to […]
Mami used to tell people that I was a very delicate boy. My parents instilled in me to do right and to avoid hurting others. I took it to heart. I always assumed that if I treated people the way I wanted to be treated, people around me would do likewise. It was the golden […]
The streets near abuela’s would crumble with each step so we’d run the two blocks to Don Lalo’s bodega, where we’d snatch tamarindo and Rancherito’s from plastic shelves within our reach and pay with smiles and small-handed pesos. He’d smile back, his gold tooth a flash of every hissing summer we’d spent chasing frogs around […]
[fiction] Part I Elsie Wood, Stenographer, Age 19 Late The sun’s long gone when I pull on my woolen coat, set my hat on my head, dash outside for the trolley, late, and I can only hope I haven’t missed the car that will get me to Washington Street on time to get the next […]
[translated poetry] V Fresheur and life “Same current, waters always new” The voice runs over the waters ++++++++++speeches crossed from god to god +++++sorcerous heritage, seaswells burgeoning +++++with careful lightness ++++++++++same as +++++same as grass crown, thatch, lalang; water crystalline, upslope downslope harmony, +++++++++++++++that the spirits’ good humor won’t cloud. Begone-become, begone as foam +++++++++++++++leaving […]
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh is a work of transgressive fiction that follows the life of heroin user Mark Renton, a.k.a. “Rents,” and his friends known as the Skag Boys. The novel takes place in Scotland with occasional trips to London. Trainspotting is told from several different points of views and includes a revolving cast of […]
(after Wilkins)
What I remember is walking inside the house, being asked if I wanted a drink. It may have been Pabst or Natural Ice or Bud Light or Budweiser or Corona. I don’t know. I don’t know what I drank. I’m sure now that we talked, in a group or alone. I can hear myself laughing, full throated and boundless. We might have played dominoes smacking them onto the wooden kitchen table or knocking with our knuckles when we had no bone to play.
What I remember is nothing, nothing and then the wall near the bed, pale and cold, staring at my face partially submerged in dark sheets. Eyelids weighted by mascaraed lashes, I looked at the white wall and waited.
I hang up from haggling with a software rep and realize my second cup of coffee is cold. Typical. I get lost in what I’m doing and rarely finish a cup of anything. In the kitchen, my husband is half done preparing a poor-boy lunch: taco shell rejects—the ones in each box a little too […]
Calling Txiv thiab Niam At six years old, True wrapped his right arm over the top of his head and touched his left ear with his right hand. That was the test to get into primary school in Laos. His fingers inched towards the tip of his ear in hopes of getting into school. “You […]
I stand in the closet choosing which of my father’s belts my mother will beat me with. Bridle, latigo, braided or smooth. His tastes contain so many fashions. Night cow hanging on top of the hill breaking grass— when they come for you do not give your skin. Countless children depend on your escape over […]
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