The town had grown too large, and so I decided to let some people go.
I spoke first to Mac Trueba, the founder of the town’s abstract realist photography collective. He was living with three friends and his wife in an apartment in the Colonia.
“San Expedito’s just grown too large, Mac,” I said. “We had the write-up in Coastal Homeowner’s, and then in Pacific Living, and it’s just gotten so popular that we’re too big for the zoning board.” I gave him two thousand dollars, a train ticket to Angangueo, and …

by Sarah Scharf
My parents announced their divorce the same summer the vines contracted Phylloxera, a root louse, and began to shed their rich green leaves, revealing the sea of gnarled brown stumps below. For weeks, the groundskeeper had taken soil samples, leaves, bits of debris from all the vineyards and slowly, methodically produced a timeline of the spread. The disease, he concluded had begun in a single source, a strain of Malbec grapes grown only in our vineyard, and had moved outward until the whole valley was contaminated. The divorce, …

“I’m Goose,” the boy says, extending his hand. He smiles, flashing a mouth full of silver braces and saliva-coated rubber bands. He has little eyes and big glasses and a terrible buzz cut that looks as though he did it himself.
I take his hand and try to grip it hard. Goldie has always told me that I have a weak handshake. “I’m Princess,” I tell him.
“Princess,” he repeats. His voice falters, as though he’s unaccustomed to the depth of its pitch. He clears his throat. “Cool.”
I shrug. It’s just my …

“Fuck Big Boy Burgers,” Larry mumbles to himself as he tries to slam the door at yet another greasy fast food joint that has refused him a job.  The slowing door mechanism prevents the satisfying slam that Larry had anticipated, so he forces it shut with his entire body.  A mother with a small child entering the establishment looks at Larry with slit eyes and pulls her boy’s wrist, keeping him close to her body.  Nothing is going as planned.
Shit, Larry thinks as he looks at his watch and blinks …

By Daniel Hirsch
Oh, bless be Your perfect, divine greatness—that once again failed to notice me.
I sat and watched it all this morning, with Your irresistible graces yet to cloak me in that sacred warmth of rebirth. When do I get to be chosen? When do I get to hear Your voice?
During today’s worship, Abigail Johnson made sure we all knew where she belongs in Your holy heart. She stood clutching the collar of her cape, placed her hand to her brow, and moaned in a manner of a cow needing …