Puerto Rican Heritage Month | Page 2

Passageway

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

The hole is behind the headboard. We opened it some time ago. I couldn’t say exactly when we became aware of the weariness lurking around us, maybe eight years ago. It lasted for hours, sometimes for days. Then it disappeared. During those anxious periods, we didn’t know what to do. It’s a horrible feeling. You can’t stand being with that person any longer. It’s not boredom in the strict sense of the word. Intolerance, perhaps. Everything annoys you. The way they click their tongue, the unexpected smile, the wrong word said at the wrong time, the obsequious caress. Even the things that you thought were funny before seem unbearable now. It may be the cumulative effect, a friend said. A sort of allergy—you stuff yourself on your favorite food until one day your body says: Enough! You break out in red spots, itching and sweating, which only makes it worse. Just like that. Too much of a good thing, I say. One day we looked at each other and we couldn’t take it anymore—I was fed up with him, and he with me—and we searched for a solution.

Hunger’s Pace

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By ANA MARÍA FUSTER LAVÍN

Translated by RICARDO ALBERTO MALDONADO

“Hunger. It’s like an animal trapped inside you, Thomas thought.” —James Dashner

The flavor of those eyes continued to dance in her mouth as she savored the aftertaste with little smacks of her tongue. Just before dawn, she lifted up her gaze toward the infinite, making out only the light that was deep blue and amber. Everything is relative to day, to night, to colors, and to sustenance. When you are hungry, your steps assume an ashen color as if in a dream of incineration—somber, grayish, full of pain. We’ve all been hungry, we are hunger, yet she was alone. Especially after that early morning when nature exploded into wind and rain, leaving her home battered. That morning, three of her kittens, her only companions, drowned in her basement.

Sofa

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By CEZANNE CARDONA MORALES

Translated by CURTIS BAUER

My parents conceived me on a sofa in a department store. My mother worked in the underwear section and was a second-year nursing student. My father worked in the household appliances, hardware, and gardening section, and was a fifth-year social sciences student. They’d hardly been dating a month, and they’d never worked the same shift. Until that morning in May. No one saw them enter the warehouse holding hands—the store wouldn’t open to the public for another hour. No one heard them either, despite the fact that the sofa still had a plastic covering on the cushions to protect it from any stains. The sofa was more cream than yellow; it had solid wood legs and fit three people comfortably. Though my parents didn’t intend it, that morning there were already three of us.

Tonight, the Wind

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays

By HUGO RÍOS CORDERO

The first empty ring echoed all over the room. Since we had left the island, the phone-bridge had been an effective method to recover some of the sounds that, in their absence, made our exiled evenings emptier. But when they failed to answer, uncertainty and impotence took control. It was still early there. Only the low-pitch whistle of the still-weak wind caressing the tops of the palm trees, that ambiguous premonition that could sway either way. This time it would be real. But not yet.

Three

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By CHRISTIAN IBARRA

Translated by JENNIFER ACKER

The three of them play cards in the dining room. This is the story. Nothing else. Collectively, they’re almost three hundred years old. They drink juice and laugh. Now one of them turns on a small radio, which plays “Autumn Leaves.”

The Burrow

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction

By TERE DÁVILA

They started building right away, as soon as it was safe to go outside.

“I can feel them moving!” Cristina squealed, standing knee-deep in leaves.

“Their teeth tickle!” laughed Zoe.

Something had caught their attention as they searched for pebbles and twigs. They crouched amid the soggy storm debris, then sprang up, kittenlike, uncombed curls against the gray sky, chattering and unaware of my presence. But as soon as they saw me approaching they stopped and exchanged looks. Cristina bit her bottom lip and smiled, a small and well-calculated gesture of contrition designed to deflate a scolding, but Zoe, the eldest, fixed her eyes on me, and her body tensed. She seemed ready to run, like a surprised wild thing.

de Las Pisadas Del Insomnio / from The Footsteps of Insomnia

October 29, 2018 Essays, Issue 16, Issue 16 Essays, Translation

By ANA MARÍA FUSTER LAVÍN
Translated by JENNIFER ACKER

An English translation follows the Spanish.

Día 29 desde el huracán y sin luz. Todavía las jornadas en mi trabajo, por la falta de energía, son más cortas. Mi oficina, a la que llamaba (y ya todas mis amistades conocían como) las catacumbas jurídicas, se perdieron, por lo que nos reubicamos en la biblioteca. Intento llegar lo más temprano posible, para traerle agua fría a mi querido amigo y colega Francisco, para preguntarle a los demás cómo están, si han dormido, a Pabsi si tiene gas y saber cómo siguen su mamá y Lalo (el gato), y a la vez contarles o contarnos todos a modo de terapia de grupo que seguimos a oscuras, que algunos no tienen ni techo, que el gobierno nos amputa las esperanzas en pequeños trocitos, que muchos se han ido, muerto, enferman, emigran, permanecen….

Buscando un árbol que me de sombra

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry

By SAMUEL MIRANDA

In conversation with A Hill in the South Bronx, by Perla de Leon

Estoy buscando un árbol que me de sombra
Porque el que tengo me lo van a cortar
Coro de bomba

This building stands,
the last tree to be cut down
in a garden of brick and steel
made desert of rubble and dust.

People Who Go to the Beach Alone

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By SERGIO GUTIÉRREZ NEGRÓN

Translated by HANNAH COOK

Bimbo has gone to the beach alone three times.

The first time was when he bought the used car which he would drive for the next decade, at nineteen. As soon as he arrived at his house after having finalized the transaction and showed it to his family, and as soon as his grandmother had gone back to her telenovela after congratulating him, and his brother back to the phone, stuck talking to his girlfriend, Bimbo went into his room, put a bathing suit on under his jeans, threw two towels into his backpack, got into the car, and descended, alone, from the mountains of Caguas, where three generations of his family still lived. He went alone in his new-but-old Toyota Corolla without air conditioning and with the windows down and the radio tuned to the only English music station that reached them up there. He felt nervous. It was 11 a.m. on a Wednesday.

To The Women Who Feel It In Their Bones

October 29, 2018 Issue 16, Issue 16 Poetry, Poetry

By PEGGY ROBLES-ALVARADO

Excerpt from a speech given by Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Ponce, Puerto Rico, October 12, 1933:

A people’s sense of unity has to come from women … the woman nurtures the unity of a race, the unity of a civilization, the unity of a people … Puerto Rico will be free, Puerto Rico will be sovereign and independent when the Puerto Rican woman feels free, sovereign and independent. And for the Puerto Rican woman to achieve this unity, she has to feel it in her bones…

All posts tagged: Puerto Rican Heritage Month

Passageway

Hunger’s Pace

Sofa

Tonight, the Wind

Three

The Burrow

de Las Pisadas Del Insomnio / from The Footsteps of Insomnia

Buscando un árbol que me de sombra

People Who Go to the Beach Alone

To The Women Who Feel It In Their Bones

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