Bread and Bread

The evening that Anne Frank's words wash up on our lawn follows the blue internet day that shows me the map of a planned community  for Gaza, shaped like a gun, with complex industry spotting the belly of the barrel and a pink ridge of coastal tourism along the top. The Palestinians, who have not been consulted, had plans too: tomatoes, oranges, peppers. Olives and dates. Children and school. The nearly grown children at the school down the street from us protested ICE yesterday. One of them, probably, quoted Anne in thick purple marker:  Terrible things are happening At any time of the night + day Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes, families are being torn apart. 1943, 1984, 2023, 2026 merge into a dull twilight, and that night I dream that Gazans have 24 hours to choose between being sealed inside the plan or roaming free in rubble. Source: Al Jazeera The interior is a shiny mall packed like the Blackest Friday. Nearly grown children start bands, every...

One of Cheryl’s Crazy Dreams or Part of Last Night’s NELAArt Short Film Series ? (With apologies to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency .) Italian students march in lockstep through a lecture hall to turn in their ballots before realizing the election is a fraud. Cats, rats and ferrets wage species warfare on the roof of an apartment building. A young woman hikes through the snow in search of a lost parent. A girl’s mother grooms her to be a prize-winning knitter. A couple tries to hide a runaway German prostitute in their garage during a dinner party. One bookshelf-lined attic stands in for three different apartments. A woman is reunited with her elementary-school crush on a bus trip to Mexico. A man with a handlebar mustache tap dances. Residents of a small Chinese village develop bizarre mutations as a result of pollution. Best friends are subjected to body cavity searches in a South African prison. Like this, but bloodier and with ferrets. Cheryl’s crazy dreams: 2, 4, ...

1. faith nice smart love I hadn’t seen my mentee , Daniela , since June. On Sunday texted me: “headin to la tomorrow cuz I got court the next day I be so happy to see yuh and unfortunately Jasmine [her year-old daughter] won’t be able to go.” I met her at a Yogurtland in the shiny mixed-use complex near the Red Line station. She was beautiful as always, cat eyes made cattier by Amy Winehouse eyeliner. Her hair was nearly black, like her clothes, but she could never really be goth. There would always be a part of her that seemed like she was dressed in bright pink. The stud above her upper lip sparkled. I had told her—via text, our main method of communication between her visits from Palmdale—that I’d been diagnosed with an early stage of breast cancer. That things were hard, but okay. That I’d had surgery and started chemo. Just the facts, ma’am. I knew she knew what cancer was, and I knew she cared about me. But somehow I’d thought she didn’t really know I was sick. My ...