It was on a smoggy Shanghai morning when Wang hired a hitman to kill his wife. Wang’s wife Li Ying was rich, a fuerdai. Her…
The first time our neighbor, Ms. Plinkett, made me a cup of tea, all the illusions of adulthood and demure culture I was working so…
After Poe I. Shriveled up leaves hang from the topmost branches of skeletal trees. Black smudges against a ghostly winter sky—like sleeping bat babies, or…
In Winter the teachers stop patrolling the school grounds. They stand in huddles, hands wrapped around steaming mugs, finding relief in the alcove out of…
In the garden. It looks like snow, a surreal May frost, but the sun slaps my winter-paled skin as I hunch over the tiny growths…
Imagine entering an apartment building that is outwardly non-descript, concrete, post-modern; it rises shadowing a mosque next door. Imagine the muezzin’s call to prayer is…
The old book’s cloth cover had turned gray. A friend, who knows my passion for Eastern poetry, had just given it to me as a…
The caress of the morning call yanks my soul. It screams for attention. I cannot tell who calls whom or why. Beneath me, the dusty…
The tightening in the center of my back and a slight tingling sensation inside my nose let me know that she had arrived. Mid hug with…
In the dusty, windy hills above Bethlehem, she drove alone along the lonely by-pass road leading north from Wadi al-Arayis toward East Jerusalem. It was…
Temperature hit one hundred, making our third floor apartment close to like Hell. I spent the day with Ben in the playground, leaving him under…
The Almost Mother sits with me on a park bench, smiling to herself, humming a lullaby, while she looks for children to trip. A strange…
Now for the eulogies. My brother goes first. He sobs. He and my father were close. They were both good at science. I can’t say…
The dentist says, “Oh, oh…” her hands in my mouth while her assistant holds the suction gun limp-wristed, like a pencil she might use for…
John didn’t come home that night. Reports said that a young Black man, suspected of robbery, was attacked by police officers on the corner of…
Mic, feeling every one of his fifty-four years, sat on a stool, hunched over the hundred-year-old mahogany bar scared with burn marks from the years…
It’s never a dark and stormy night. Never a dark and stormy day, either. Ain’t been since ‘fore I was born. The sky’s straight-up robin’s…
Train travel was slowly dying out like the art of writing letters. I didn’t care for such statements made by various people I knew. I…
After an excruciating week of meetings in New York City, my husband was to arrive back home via bus. Noon sharp, he’d told me. He…
A man couldn’t remember the combination to a padlock. He didn’t want to break it, so he tried 0000, then 0001. He was prepared to…