The chaser approaches cautiously, raising his large frame from the stoop on which he sits, and ambles over. "Hi, I'm Mike." I extend a hand outward. "Sorry I smell," he says. "There was a house fire down the street this morning that I had to go check out." He doesn't offer his name. His billowy frame is draped in billowy clothes - tattered jeans, dirty sweatshirt, worn-out shoes. His beard is unkempt and his glasses are foggy, and his photos of the city are beautiful - hundreds of snaps of an...

When I woke to the sound of screeching tires, the sway of our vehicle across three lanes of traffic, and my thirteen year old cousin Reed clutching to the steering wheel to save us from plunging off the side of I-25, I finally admitted to myself that I had a problem. It wasn't like it was the first time I'd fallen asleep behind the wheel. That happened quite a bit. But it was the first time I'd fallen asleep with people I cared about along for the ride. I looked at my cousin, gave him a pat...

The apartment shudders, a waking dog stirred by the truck traffic barreling down the brooklyn queens expressway. Out the as-yet uncovered windows, the sky is the same smothered blue his shuttered eyes snuffed out last night. The only difference he feels is the stiffness in his shifting gaze and the constriction of throat and nostrils, which in his sleep waged war against pathogens his duller, more familiar senses let slip by. He slides out of the dusty sheets and moves across the dusty floor,...

I've been sitting here trying to figure out why the television in my hotel room says "Aerodynamic" on top. Such a quality is not typically a selling point for a TV set, unless, I suppose, you needed to throw it, as I've been wanting to do since the pounding on my hotel walls began sometime earlier this evening.

The noise spills in from everywhere. From nowhere. Is there an attic? Because if so, it is definitely coming from the attic. If there is an attic, maybe there is someone trapped in...

I was sixteen when I decided I was ready to become a Mexican. I had spent years honing my abilities, and finally felt that I had all the elements in my repertoire. I knew all the gangster slang: cholo, rolo, vato, chingaso, carnal. I could even execute that last one with a perfect tongue roll and draw out the last syllable until it faded away into sweet nothingness. Carrrrrnnal. Carrrnaaaaaal. I practiced my accent along with Chuey in "Blood In, Blood Out", a movie I had watched eight times...

Rain pours relentlessly, filling gutters and drowning spirits, laying its cadence down upon on the rooftops of Panama City, a steady drumroll daring the people to step outside onto its battlefield. Booms of cannonfire thunder shout out their orders sporadically, summoning forth a thick grey fog which casts its ominous veil over inner city highrises, marching ever inland. The busy city streets begin to empty of pedestrians who search for refuge in every market, corner store, cab, or bus within...

Twenty four hours ago, I was sleeping in a pitched tent inside the Cancun airport. The last fourteen hours I've passed on a crowded bus, rumbling down the Riviera Maya. Suffice to say, I've been eagerly anticipating my destination. When at last we cross the Frontera, a reggae beat drum-rolls its way onto the radio, crowding out the unwanted ranchera,. The aire of forced accommodation and assimilation into Mexico is lifted like an unwanted shroud, carried off in the Caribbean breeze behind our...

Once a year, the carnival would grace my tiny town with its presence, and my world would, for a single summer week, be transformed. The fun came to rest at the Montrose County fairgrounds, smack dab in the middle of a broad pit of mud, dust, and cow dung. In the dry desert heat the carnival would take shape, and all of bored children of summer would come out of their Nintendo stupors and into a world full of wonders. It was a chance to shake routines, to interact with something other than a...

I’m writing this from on an old rustic bus on its way from Santa Marta to Manizales. The scenery we pass is a feast for the eyes: pastel houses clinging to the sides of green rolling hills, streams that curve their way through calm, shaded valleys, all beneath the comfort of a cool blue blanket of sky. The view is, as the Colombians say, “divino” ... or would be, if the bus would stop shaking like a god damned blender long enough for me to take it all in.

You could say the journey’s been...