Patricia Esteban Erlés; Megan Berkobien ::

They’ll cut all my hair off in that creepy school for bad little girls, they’ll make me wear a sack, they’ll shut me up in a room filled with rats and cockroaches and all I’ll have to drink is the rainwater I can catch in my hands through the barred-up window.

Read the full story here in Palabras Errantes.

Cristina Peri Rossi; Megan Berkobien ::

Buy a mattress of… He had wanted to try out a new waterbed, but she had thought it an excessive investment. Investment, no, he corrected himself: an expense. Aboard that aquatic mattress, they could have paddled themselves through life, hardly swaying, rowing – arms crossed, excuse me, in cross, arms extended in, the shape of, a cross; sacrifice, hands hardly bent, the altar of some tribute, gods less perverse than you, legs gently opened, like this, hands bent and arms extended, the altar of sacrificial, ritual gesture, swaying back and forth, now this way, to port, now that way. Me above, you below, me below, you above, and the ship always rocking, me aside, you crouching, me standing, you kneeling, me leaning, you from the back, you standing, me going down. Why didn’t she want to open her mouth?

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Cristina Peri Rossi; Megan Berkobien ::

There were so many stars he felt he saw them not only through his eyes, not only did they flood his pupils and retinas and irises and eyelashes and the lake of his brow, but suddenly the stars invaded him, penetrating him through his ears, assailing his hearing, filling up his head, his hair, the air in his mouth. He had stars in his fingers and below his fingernails and his pockets were filled with stars and if he took a step his feet would crush the twinkling celestial bodies.

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Care Santos; Megan Berkobien ::

But, what does a mountain of books matter when compared to the iron bridges, the concrete masses, the skyscrapers hurdled into the void? We heard them fall piece by piece, one by one. First the glass gave way, then the iron and cement frames. The entire city began to corrode. The rusty gangrene penetrated everything, even spreading to stone. The noise returned for a while: that of the collapsing of structures at one point erected by men, so self-fulfilled. By day, wind and foliage. By night, wolves howling at the moon.

And we, the ghosts, terrified, listening.

.

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Patricia Esteban Erlés; Megan Berkobien ::

FRESH MEAT

I like opening the fridge and finding you there.

Read the full selection here.

Gabriela Damián; Megan Berkobien ::

In the depths of my head the melody booms alongside a groan, deep and dry; the combination submerges me in a thick drowsiness. I feel so heavy that I sink, I feel like all of me is paralyzed, but the strangest part is that it’s not my body that can’t move, but me. And, yet, there I am, I see everything happening in front of me while the notes repeat themselves, while the terrible sensation of a never-ending fall tickles my legs, and the sensation that it’s me and not my body that’s submerged in a black well of heavy waters, the music taking hold of my hands, of my flesh… My brother puts his eternally idiotic face back on as he climbs the stairs. And it’s only at that point that I return from that darkness, from that death.

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Gabriela Damián; Megan Berkobien ::

I’m out in the open air, in the sun. The treetops are green and high up. I walk through tall grass, which whispers with the passing of a cool wind, almost cold, reminiscent of early spring. My grandparents’ house, where my aunt lived all her life, stands in front of me across a raging river that shines brightly in the daylight and throws its foamy bubbles along the rock bed. I near the bank to make sure that it can’t be crossed, for the water is colored topaz, warning of a risky depth. The iron door, whose twisted bars end in golden points, is closed. My aunt watches me from behind the iron bars. She has the same hairstyle as in my baby photos, the same scandalous-a-go-go makeup with false lashes that highlight her eyes, the same frozen smile. I know she’s dead.

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