in memoriam Amalia del Carmen The way the story goes, two whole days passed before Miguel finally stumbled home. And it took just as long for him to snap out of whatever spell had been cast on him before he...

The dark shape of the mountains covers the moon as the car trundles over the tar roads leading out to Cortada. You remember windmills spinning over fields of plátanos where your grandparents took you as a child, but to think...

En medio de la clase se me escapó un gemido. Por unos segundos, todos voltearon a verme. Me llevé los dedos a la boca y empecé a quitarme el esmalte con los dientes. Paré cuando noté que había atrapado la...

The sun sets, welcoming the ethereal dusk that precedes velvet darkness. The nights before the new moon when the least amount of light drips onto Pachamama, those are the nights I offer my counsel. For hundreds of years since the...

During our lunch break, we could go outside when we are done. That’s what we usually did. I mean, who wants to sit in a smelly cafeteria after all? There’s a woman called la Llorona who takes children and drowns...

People marveled at the three-story house in the outskirts of Licey al Medio. The speed at which a group of men built the cinder block structure was unlike anything they’d ever seen. The home towered over the others on this...

La primera vez que fui a la gallera (bueno vale la pena decir que me llevaron, prácticamente un secuestro si nos ponemos literales) había estado bebiendo ron en un car wash desde altas horas de la mañana con unos tigueres...

“Opportunities like this come once in a lifetime, Flavia,” said Marisol in an officious tone. She was holding one of Flavia’s hands and looking into her eyes as if she were disclosing the mystery of the Apocalypse. They had been...

I find the skull lying in a back alley. It has no eyes, but I know she looks at me—a timid shriek coming out of the darkness. Thick storms of brown and gray spill out of the trash as I...

A six-year-old me played a game of “stay awake” against the car window while Mom drove me and my sister to school every morning. On Wednesdays, the West Farms train staircase looked like the stairs to reach a roller coaster....