On "Clínica Tikal" by Vanessa Blakeslee (5921 words) ***

I'm not much into pure science fiction, but this Blakeslee's piece does such a good job of telling a story that I felt it worthy to share here. We start in Latin America, with a woman who visits a soothsayer regularly. This woman is told that she has a cyst that must be removed immediately if she is to ever have children. She is to go, not to the best doctors in Guatemala, and not to New York City. She is to go rather to a mysterious place that the soothsayer writes out for her on the card. The place, as we find out (as we in fact expect), turns out to be much more than a great medical establishment. Read the story here at Ascent.

On "Bird Sanctuary" by Gabriel Welsch (5002 words) ****

Janet has some issues with life. They involve men. They involve friends. They involve work. Or really, the involve being a single with no life outside of work, outside of the stress that comes with a failure in one's work. I remember once in high school sort of befriending a guy who tended not to have any friends--by that I mean, not that I sought him out but that I was perfectly okay with him hanging out with me if he wished to. My small clique of friends weren't okay with him, and they did some not so nice things to discourage his presence. Still, there were other opportunities for him and me alone. And it was in those times that I discovered not some nice guy just wanting someone to accept him; rather, I discovered a not-so-nice guy who was not only not much of a pleasure to be around but, at times, a genuine jerk. As we get to know Janet, unfortunately, we discover much the same. Perhaps, used to rejection as she is, she makes it easy for people to reject her by treating them like scum. Read the story here at Ascent.

On "Scold" by Arthur Diamond (6334 words) ****

Diamond's "Scold" works off a set of stereotypes--or rather, it begins there and asks us to think about them in the context of religion. Rabbi Barsimson, along with a black nurse, helps an Asian lady who falls down one day in the street. The black nurse makes a series of comments about Jews that essentially places the rabbi into a set of typically Jewish distinctives he doesn't fit. The story shifts here to the rabbi's congregation, which is selecting a new rabbi--one who is a lesbian who uses puppetry as part of her sermons. The older members in the congregation have no interest in such a rabbi; the younger ones, however, support her. Barsimson seems both supportive and dismissive of the new way--he knows that he can't change what's coming, but he recognizes that it must be accepted, just like the fact that the congregation itself will likely dissolve in the next year, replaced with a mosque (unbeknownst to most of the lay people). The key, perhaps, is to stick together, to help one another, Barsimson seems to hint, but he never quite manages to articulate it other than with the bloodstains that still rest on his pants. Read the story here at Ascent.

On "Stranger Danger" by Hadley Moore (4192 words) ****

I love Moore's "Stranger Danger" for its little observations that ring so true. Katherine is a single mom. The father, however, is kindly very involved in her son's life, as is his wife. There's a moment, toward the beginning of the story, when Katherine realizes that her boyfriend is not going to stick with her after her son's birth. "I wonder who's he'll be," he says. But that's not the most chilling detail. I find one a bit later to be so incredibly true to people who don't fit the mold of the typical American trajectory. As a single mom whose father's son is married, Katherine feels like the interloper in her own son's life, as if he has a perfect family of his own, and she's just a glorified babysitter. I love that detail because I can so identify with it, as perennial single guy among married and childed friends. I'm still the kid, the not fully adult one, even though I'm older than a lot of those around me. Because of how things came out in life, I never got to grow up. Katherine, too, feels this sad kind of halfness. I thank Moore for bringing this woman so well to life. Read the story here at Ascent.