TRIBES MAGAZINE ONLINE 2020-2023
FICTION, POETRY, & FEATURES
FICTION
Wtf? that guy says freeze. you say get in. if neither of ya’s wanna be in charge, i’ll take over.”
Breathing again, you fall into your bed and reach for last September's issue of Teen Witch, still folded open to Diana's column. Diana is the reason you keep stealing this magazine month after month. In the last year, you’ve come to feel your sorcery has outgrown that of the rest of the Teen Witch staff who are still concerned with base things like the energetic correspondences of crystals or charms, spells that seem to have no power beyond nebulous vibes or blessings. "How to Make a Boy Fall in Love with You" they offer, or "How to Win Friends with Three Simple Spells."
easing the density, they mean building more luxury housing for new arrivals who only want an urban lifestyle with a walled-off suburban mentality—keep away difference, avoid unplanned interaction, don’t talk to anyone on the street because this might be dangerous.
My place was on 61st Street and Second Avenue, above a 24-hour deli where cabbies bought coffee before going back to Queens. Traffic from the 59th Street Bridge never let up and Midtown East lapped against my block. The ever-present reminder of just having made the cut.
My beautiful, tall, long-limbed sister, Susan. Her wheat-blonde hair thicker and lighter than either Jack’s or mine, just like my father’s, where we’d been given our mother’s limp mouse-brown locks. Susan who couldn’t be told anything she didn’t want to hear. Susan who was eighteen and so beautiful that I’d never known anyone who didn’t fall in love with her at least a little. Susan who spoke what she meant as if the world waited to hear it.
She’d just finished high school. She was ready for a break, a summer with her friends, some time to decide on what came next in life.
We had agreed to babysit Bobby’s toothpick baby so he and his wife Georgina could attend a gala for his financial firm. My and Katie’s unsuccessful attempts at having our own toothpick baby were well documented on her side of the family.
POETRY
FEATURES
u. My grandfather is also long dead, but his cashew plantation is not yet dead. Trees outlive their planters.
In our circle memory, our minds race in different directions, lunging at brief moments, so that we can cup them in our palms for longer.
