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Dante’s K-car, a rental provided to him by the company, slows to a stop, a popping rising from underneath the tires as it rolls over rocks, a persistent hissing pressing out from under its hood, a greyish cloud seeping from the hood’s seams. Dante, standing next to the over-heated automobile, could smell what he assumed was a mixture of rubber and auto fluid wandering through his nose, a fine perspiration dotting his forehead and pooling underneath his eyes. Dust spreads across the South Texas town in large wisps, a searing hush twisting in devilish whirls, brushing past Dante’s ears, finding hollow, empty spaces echoing the ghostly voices of dead aliens who penetrated the border, only to find their mortal body could not outrun the need for hydration. Dante surveyed the area for any signs of life. The town bears the appellation of a Spanish namesake, an inheritance of from a saint, transformed from the English, made holy by adding the word “san” in front of it, something like San Migue

I. The four parts of my heart thrum a rhythm against the sheath of ice, gripping their cavities, and, in concert, slide through the space where the rib I gave you used to be, leaving a ticklish sensation as they squeeze through. They abandon a residue  of slow sadness and frenetic anxiousness in the emptiness.  II. My brain. A haze presses upon its folds, exhausts the optic nerve, leaves a rawness behind my eyelids, leaves a soreness where the sclera meets the skull, and draws the eyes wide and weepy, dispatches pieces of static across my scalp and out the hair follicles. III. My limbs, like heavy branches grasp, fumble with  the fruits of your sorrow, weighted by a frigid numbness. Gravity drags on weakened joints, until the connective tissue snap, riving arteries and veins, disengaging bone from bone, permitting my arms and legs to disown the thickness of my trunk. IV. I am no longer a whole, but mere parts, disassembled, pic

Valentin had one hand on the handle of the mailbox on the corner Morning Dove Lane and Evening Sun Avenue, a lone blue metal box, with a domed top, a white eagle flying in from the left, a dynamic profile, fast, efficient. Not as efficient or fast as an email. Not as fast or efficient as a text message. Not as fast or efficient as just speaking directly to his wife, in the morning, after his morning run, after a hot shower, over a hot bowl of apple cinnamon oatmeal, heated up in a microwave with a bit of milk, and flavored with pieces of fruit, raspberries, blackberries, or strawberries, whatever hadn’t spoiled in the refrigerator as a result of not being consumed quickly enough. Valentin thought about that fruit, about how frustrating it was that no matter how quickly he tried to consume the berries, the bananas, some of it managed to go bad. The berries softened, turned dark, deflated, and then grew moldy. The bananas grew dark brown spots like skin cancer across the skin. He pinches

I feel the blood puddle at my feet, feel the wetness seep up into my sandals, the thick stickiness finding its way between my toes. A hot storm roils in my stomach while a sharp pressure in the back of my head causes everything in my view to start to turn a fuzzy steel grey. The contents of my stomach would have fled my stomach had I not kept them down by swallowing with large gulps. However, my throat burns with the fierceness of hot coals. The body lays at our feet, all of our feet. I cannot give myself permission to call him by his name because he is no longer here. Whatever he was, that part of him has escaped the mortal form and gone on to something better, leaving us to figure out how to deal with the fallout of it all. Igor says something I didn’t catch, the blood pumping too much in my ears, like waves of guilt. I was a good girl. I am a good girl, or so I keep telling myself. Maybe I should have followed the example of Karen, who was strong enough to know when enough was enou

Ten of us conspired to murder Garrett Greenwell although only eight of us actually managed to endure the exhausting course it took to arrive at this moment. You’d have thought that standing over Garrett’s body, his immaculate blue suit, blood-soaked, would have invoked certain emotions in me, terror heightened by the rapid beating of an adrenaline fueled heart, anger rising from a manufactured offense, pleasure withdrawn from a well of psychopathy housed in the core of my soul. But none of that was the case. I felt nothing but pure serenity. “What are we going to do with the body?” Unlike me, Igor failed to appreciate the beauty in Garrett’s death, failed to perceive the canvas upon which we artists had sketched our work, failed to distinguish between the colors of the pallet we used to paint upon that canvas. We hovered over the body looking down upon it, eight murderers, shoulders hunched, heads hung, vultures over a carcass ready to feed. I exited my body for a moment so that I coul

In time, things would be different, the emotional build-up which prevented us from understanding what was going on, it would all dissipate leaving us with a feeling of emptiness and glow of sadness and shock, kind of like a bathtub which had been drained. In the meantime, we were left standing in a pile of rubble where the missile had entered and had exploded. We had been lucky, if you could call it that, lucky that the building had been constructed the way it had, so that where we were, we were protected generally from the blast. Others had not been so lucky, victims of a despicable war, laying down while their souls waded through the dust formed in the air, choked, unable to leave this Earth as a result of the detritus cloud. I looked at her, her eyes so wide, so vague, so unreadable, her pupils that same deep purple, the same color of space dust that you see in photographs of space, bright against a background of black, except in reverse, bright against a background of white. I wan

My great-grand parents arrived in America in the 1920's, just in time to witness a number changes in its fabric, to see the her frayed ends, the poor who lost every thing they invested in a country that promised so much, and those parts decorated lavishly, with extravagant and gaudy, the rich which hid behind the thick doors of huge mansions where alcohol, though illegal, flowed freely, and where the only occupation practiced was leisure and its practitioners perfected their craft in ennui. My great-grandparents had not only brought with them the very few possessions, mostly clothing, a few knickknacks holding special meaning, seasoned into the very fiber of the momento, a Bible floating down the generations carefully inscribed with name after name of each baby born, whether they survived the years or not, a doll made from spared rags, with buttoned eyes, one hanging on, literally, by a thread, but had brought with them the stories of the old-country, stuffed in vast compartment

I peruse the numerous discounted e-books that Barnes and Noble offers almost on a daily basis looking for the rare gem of a book, normally priced at $9.99, reduced to $7.99, or even to $2.99 or less.  I obtained a copy of The Flamethrowers this way, bought it despite the ragged cover art, and the fact that the website advertised that the protagonist in the book meandered her way through relationships, a story which might interest other audiences, but not me.  The fact that the book earned a spot on the National Book Award's finalist list for 2013 persuaded me to pay the measly amount for the book. Once bought, the cover became clearer under the light of ownership.  It features a young blond woman with an "x" taped over her mouth.  She looks at the camera, and ultimately, the purchaser of the book, a calm disdain in her eyes.  I immediately though of those modern works of art that I studied in college wherein the artist attempts to make you aware that in fa