Prince Locket
Crow etched all his past lives into the crystal game, but when he landed on his least favorite life, the time of endless talk and snow, where he called out for his beloved, but the chatter and the cold was too thick for her to hear over the trees, he said, No dice.
Cold Locket
Crow was talking so intently to his eldest sister that he didn't notice that his youngest sister had tied him to a telephone pole and that gold bled at his feet, and all the city’s animals had come to pay homage and the snow had turned them to statues so they were finally like gods.
Cave Locket
Crow and his friend, the Hare, ate stones out of spite because their families had hurt them. They ate so many that he began to tell the other animals their fortunes, whether they wanted to hear them or not. When the sun cruised through the trees, they thought, this is what alone must feel like. No one was listening to us, and the joy felt like a violent rain that would never stop.
Monique Quintana
Monique Quintana is a Chicana from Fresno, CA, and is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her work has been published in Pank, Wildness, Lost Balloon, Okay Donkey, and The Acentos Review, among others. Her work has also been supported by Yaddo, The Sundress Academy for the Arts, The Community of Writers, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She was the inaugural winner of Amplify’s Writer of Color Fellowship and is a contributing editor at Luna Luna Magazine, where she writes book reviews, artist interviews, and personal essays. You can find her at moniquequintana.com.