The Beginning Of A New Short Story

Death had a strange way of being at the beginning, rather than the end which is the rightcorrect order of things, or sotheysay. Her mother (Carolina, 34) had been dead for three minutes before Iris had been loosened from a gash under the navel, a womb that had only recently become a wound. Slick fat, echoing a motion that had lost its source.

Follow the history of that motion and the path dries up, becomes an ashy twig.

Her father (Mortimer,-) chose not to tell Iris of the cold circumstances of her birth. He 'd say she was born, fully formed like Eve from Adam's Rib; like Athena from Zeus' skull, cracked open and split.

And in that way, she was entirely of him and no part of death. The explanation satisfied both parties in a fuzzy and incomplete way. Mortimer accepted that he would wear the role of a mother the way children wear private school uniforms-with a sense of unsure obligation.

-Saehee Cho
October 2007

excerpt from "you myth, i mith"

We see the grapefruit and hold it in our hands to weigh. There is no cashier, the world at the moment is a grocery store. If there were a cashier in this world he’d be standing solemnly, looking out the window while we shopped, trusting fully in our thievery. He’d be right. With a blotched navel and porous rind the grapefruit we are considering over the others is coarse, a texture that debatably correlates with taste. I think it will taste bitter and I think that it will drip when broken apart.






Nancy Romero, October 2007