BY MONIQUE QUINTANA
In Tara Isabel Zambrano's short story collection, Death, Desire, and Other Destinations (Okay Donkey Press, 2020), women find autonomy in peripheral beauty and strange thoughts. In the opening story, "Alligators," Brown girls forge connections against a windy, sun-scorched, and road-traveled backdrop. When the narrator has a sexual tryst with a Native teenage girl in a public restroom, she sees the power of fleeting moments, "her rough scaly skin lunges and lurks under passing streetlamps, a sensation like rolling marbles up and down the spine." The tension created in the small and unexpected place is like a flower bloom surprise and does much to create a mood for the longing and dark joy pervasive in the book.
Another highlight is the story "Measured Hours," which finds its lyrical beats through time stamps on the page, following a day of borderline intimacies. A married mother blurs domestic spaces as she lies in bed with her lover, "Nick talks about his wife's latest plastic flower collection. I cringe, resist my temptation to get up while he stares at his picture on the phone. I keep my leg over my thighs. " This, like many of the collection's other pieces, shows the unnerving that comes with tapping into another person's energy and their attachments.
The brevity of Zambrano’s stories makes for a read that is fevered, fun, and questions what thing will happen next. The pieces work as stand-alone stories but harmonize with themes of Queerness, magic, familial, and multifaceted love. This is a necessary edition to QBIPOC and feminist experimental ficton.
Monique Quintana is a Xicana from Fresno, CA, and the author of the novella Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her short works have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize. She has also been awarded artist residencies to Yaddo, The Mineral School, and Sundress Academy of the Arts. She has also received fellowships to the Community of Writers, the Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, and she was the inaugural winner of Amplify’s Megaphone Fellowship for a Writer of Color. You can find her @quintanagothic and moniquequintana.com.