Juan Álvarez
translated by Heather Cleary

“What,” I said. That was how I answered the phone then. It was a forceful what—scrappy, combative. But combative isn’t quite the word, because my greeting was always followed by the desire to be left alone. The way I answered the phone had to do with a few demoralizing years misspent in Mexico working as a reader for a commercial publishing house, and also with all those sniveling Colombians who say Aló? and then launch into one story after another like idiot nightingales in a cage.

A voice on the other end of the line said hello.

“Yeah, what?” I repeated.

“Hello?” repeated the voice.

This kind of game isn’t my thing. I cut right to the chase.

“Who is this? What do you want?”

“Galvareza?” The voice asked, timidly.

“That’s right.”

“My name is Estela Lara. I’m María José and María del … Read More »

from J’ai perdu tout ce que j’aimais by Sacha Sperling
translated by Addie Leak

I had decided that my name would be Sacha Sperling and that my life would be dazzling and spectacular.

I’d understood that the only way to exist was to become someone else.

I’d written a book.

The book was a success.

It was translated into languages I didn’t speak.

For two years, the foreign versions accumulated in my bookcase. My face was on some; on others, young Asian boys in suggestive poses. Most of the covers looked like the anti-tobacco posters stuck to the walls of school infirmaries.

The book was simple. It was a bunch of scenes telling the story of a lost teenager in love with his best friend. A fourteen-year-old boy almost mechanically recounting the dissolute lives of his … Read More »

Rosario Bléfari
translated by Hilary Levinson

We’re standing in the plaza, watching the man who makes ashtrays in just a minute or two. The scent of freshly burned wood. The sound of the carving: the impact from the blow that splits the wood into pieces. Wood chips flying. Sawdust accumulating on the pavement. A secret understanding of figure and ground—knowing what needs to be removed in order to read what’s left in relief. The blowtorch used like a paintbrush. It’s nonstop entertainment because it lasts for a minute, and then it starts over again and there is always somebody ready to ask for the next one. I think about what name I would carve into the wood but I don’t smoke enough to have an ashtray with my name, nor do I have a relationship with anyone that is worthy … Read More »

James Warner

The first account our agency landed was a fortified wine called Clouf. Roland slammed a bottle on my desk and told me to think something up before he got back from lunch. Knowing nothing about vermouth, I started to bang out a jingle on our office piano, under the impression the product was a cleaning detergent.

When Roland returned, he poured some into a six-ounce glass. “A beautiful nose,” he said, “subtly andrognynous with intimations of hyssop.”

I tried some. Clouf pretty much tasted like cleaning detergent to me. It was wine steeped with gentian root, myrrh, bitter orange peel, hops, and various secret ingredients, then fortified with brandy. It contained more glacier wormwood—Artemisia glacialis—than other vermouths, perhaps not much of a selling point.

Like field operatives, Roland and I visited the seediest Soho pubs we could find, … Read More »

Paul Scheerbart
translated by Joel Morris

The tall trees groped more and more intensely in the air with their long branch arms and could not calm themselves down; they wanted to know for certain what they once were, back when they did not yet have branches.

The asteroid Juno was a thick round disc. It resembled an earthly pancake. The diameter of this pancake measured no more than 200 kilometers; it was at most five kilometers thick, but it was only that thick in the middle—towards the edges it became thinner and thinner.

The only inhabitants of Juno were immensely tall tree creatures, whose roots entwined together in the middle of the planet. The trees reached extremely high up into the ether—in the middle nearly a hundred kilometers high—just as much on one side of … Read More »

Tryno Maldonado
translated by Janet Hendrickson

1

My mother is a teacher. A preschool teacher. If you want to fuck up a man’s amorous relationships with women for the rest of his life, there’s no more efficient method than this: sign him up for his mother’s preschool class. Good luck, Freud! With time I’ve developed the belief that my relationships with women are nothing but one emulation after another of this, my platonic and stormy relationship with my preschool teacher. Who happened to be my mother. The same longings, the same idealizations, the same expectations. The same scenes of jealousy. The same mistakes. Ah, Freud… One day, when I was six, my mother caught me masturbating with a pair of her underwear that she’d hung to dry in the shower. I was accused. That afternoon my grandmother … Read More »

Inés Marcó
translated by Alex Niemi

CAST

Pope
Layman
Guard of the Brotherhood
Brothers of the Circle

The characters meet at the entrance of a large urinal. The Pope is waiting for them.

Before entering, the brothers greet the Pope by turning in circles and waving their hands as if dancing the tarantella.

Everyone wears paint-stained aprons.

After the greeting, the Pope bestows a brush and palette on each of them.  The brothers introduce themselves and crawl one by one into the hole of the urinal.

Once inside, the ceremony begins.

The Pope asks the Guard of the Brotherhood if all present belong to the circle.  The Guard of the Brotherhood makes his rounds and confirms that they do.

Pope: Dada. Dada. Let the meeting begin!

All (in a church whisper): Dada. Dada.

Pope: In this, the 92nd year of our era, we will initiate a layman to our … Read More »

Eva Marer

The German teacher lived on a street of towering trees. Their weeping boughs stroked the curb, leaving sun-dappled green tunnels you could walk through. Birds flitted through the wheel-wells of cars, which seldom passed but stood parked for hours like sentries guarding their owners under house arrest. A dog barked, a child shouted; their voices—birds and children—warbled across the occasional buckshot of a car backfiring on a distant block.

Into the silence Mimi’s sobs echoed. She cried and clung to the door handle of the blue Volkswagen bus. The crown of her head was no higher than the top of the hubcap. She twisted and writhed, kicking the tire in protest. She didn’t want to go to the German lesson. She wanted to carry on and do exactly as she was doing: inertia.

“Mommy, please!” Her shrieks … Read More »

Juan Carlos Mondragón
translated by Leah Leone

Until the middle of the afternoon of the day before yesterday, I thought I had a good angle for the article I was writing about an incident in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, as a way to further the discussion about the submarine strategy employed during the blockade of Port Arthur. While researching, I also worked on my courses for the upcoming semester—I teach Latin American History at an Italian university and lead a seminar based on Eugen Millington Drake’s Battle of the River Plate—to bring focus on the key elements that had contributed to the stunning efficacy of a joint strike at high seas, the incalculable factor that had made it a classic battle in all of military history, without arriving at a convincing conclusion. When the logical connection has rusted over, … Read More »