A country grows, waters its deserts, raises its children, cultivates trees, constructs cities, opens schools, equips hospitals, defends its borders, builds skyscrapers, programs its computers, fights a necessary war, accepts immigrants, starts businesses, names its restaurants bistro or gourmet, goes to another war and then another. This is when minions work for their masters, dogs bite every stranger, newspapers close down, pumpernickel tastes better than homemade bread, and a skunk feeds on everybody’s breath.
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Avital Gad-Cykman is author of the flash collection Life In, Life Out, published by Matter Press. Her prize-winning stories are forthcoming or have been published in Prairie Schooner, The Literary Review, Ambit, CALYX Journal, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, W.W. Norton’s International Flash Fiction Anthology and elsewhere. She lives in Brazil.