Search All Winners

WEN CHANG

he was leading students in an obscene chant.

SAUL

what'd he say?

WEN CHANG

"u.s.a. u.s.a."

SAUL

oh come ON, that's every titty bar in america.

WEN CHANG

surrounded by student protestors in white headbands. it was a clear political protest. a declaration of war.

SAUL

war?! are you crazy?

WEN CHANG

less than twenty-four hours on chinese soil and this is what he does. how could you do this to me?

“Do you masturbate?” he pried.

“Only alone, by myself.” I felt him bristle at my insolence.

“Do you work with appropriate fantasies?”

“Work?”

“You know, do you masturbate to appropriate fantasies before indulging in your inappropriate ones?” He’d given me very specific instructions about this. He scolded my silence by scooting his chair forward till I could smell the odor of his leg.

“Sometimes. Sometimes I forget.”

THE SEX OFFENDER © 1994 by Matthew Stadler; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.

Any time Manny wanted to sell a gun or a big load of weed he’d hand the deal over to one of his main boys. Manny called Chico, Beto, and Paco, then Chevy and Rafa, his right hands cause they was ready to slice open an enemy or blood up a buyer that didn’t pay up, and so they got the juiciest sheep and the most money. Got the most room on the street. The rest of the Lobos was just taggers or third-raters. Tagger babies are the locos who sprayed our sets all over town so people know we own it. They’d dog around here with their spray paint cans and their fake-tough faces, bragging how they did a job up on the freeway signs or almost got busted by the police for messing up a mural. “Hey, homes!” they’d laugh out to each other. “You see the job I did? Got up twenty feet that time!”

LOCAS © 1997 by Yxta Maya Murray; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.

Orion shot rabbits, but to tell the truth, it almost sickened Cora to clean and cook them. Stripped of its pelt, the taut body glistened. The small legs put her in mind of fingers. On her plate all she could think of was the pleading eyes. Somehow this did not trouble her about chickens, which she took the pains to behead herself, sometimes chasing the headless flapping bird around the chopping block. Orion plucked the bird for her, and the feathers were saved for a sleeping crib for Madge.

He did it deliberately &

so when the police tracked him down he was

able to explain it so

clearly they had to

agree. Still, they hadn’t done it.

Anyway, he’d checked it out &

it was what they’d suspected,

women! – women just

opened & spilled, there was

nothing special in there after all.

Maybe he pictured just the nail,

the slight swirl in the center of the head and raised

the hammer, and brought it down with fury and with skill

and sank it with a single blow.

Not a difficult truck for a journeyman, no harder

than figuring stairs or a hip-and-valley roof

or staking out a lot, but neither is a house,

a house is just a box fastened with thousands of nails.