by Kevin McCaughey
Natashas have always seemed long to me.  Long-haired, long-legged, comfy at great heights, like in an expensive revolving restaurant.
Which is funny, because I never met a Natasha like that.  But, if I ever saw a Russian girl like that, I’d think she would be a Natasha.
My Natasha wasn’t that type at all.  She [...]

by Landon Spencer
My friends are concerned.
“Why are you going to Yugoslavia?” they want to know.
“There is no Yugoslavia.”  I reply.  Like the pop star, Prince, who for a time changed his name to an unutterable symbol, the word Yugoslavia can now only be invoked when preceded by the phrase formerly known [...]

by Catherine Parker
“So you’re bailing on me.”
“Look, I’m sorry Cath. I’m not earning pounds like you are. I just can’t afford it.”
I sighed into the phone, and looked out the window of my tiny flat in London. Rain, rain and more rain. It suited my mood. I had been living in London for eight months [...]

by Dulce Maria Gray
You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones
And they won’t come undone
Here, in Turkey, the “cradle of civilizations” that nursed 13 successive societies spanning 10,000 years; here, far from everything that is familiar to me, where I am anonymous; here, in the midst of Cappadocian ruins [...]

by Leah M. Cano
I was seventeen and it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me. It had been a public display of affection for all to see. He had jumped up on the side of the bus as the driver was revving his engine, hoisting himself up toward the open window [...]

by Carol Beddo
Mid-July in Los Angeles, my newborn grandchild needs no more than her diaper. Less than a mile from the Pacific coastline, offshore breezes from Venice Beach wring out warm and dry as they flow up the slight incline and cross Lincoln Avenue. These hot winds embrace us; Nora cradles in the crook of [...]

By Michelle McAlister
Don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate backpackers’ zealous appetite-for-fun, and even their raucous pranks, but I did not fly across the Atlantic to wear a Grecian toga and pound shots of pink-hued booze in a 10:00am contest. So when my taxi driver shows up to rescue me from the Pink Palace, a [...]

By Nicole Zimmerman
“Um beijinho,” Gean coaxed, his lips just brushing my ear as he whispered it. “One little kiss.”
It wasn’t romance that I was seeking when I came to Brazil. But it sought me. Romance swept me into its arms on the dance floor of a forro festival. It raised its eyebrows and murmured “gostoza” [...]

By Barbara Robertson
“The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his toys and his most steadfast love.” – Octavio Paz
This is what I remember: White sheets limp with sweat twisted around his naked body, a low mattress in a small white room, sun [...]

by Jann Huizenga
“Now I must go move my cows,” says Fabio in Italian. “Do you want to see my farm?” The invitation seems innocent enough, and I readily agree. Certo! In my desultory Sicilian life, there’s nothing I don’t want to see, no frontier to my curiosity.
We fold ourselves into his little yellow bee of [...]