For the short story reader. Updated every Monday.

The Short Form


Giovanna Rivero


In what should have been the house’s hall, my grandfather had set up a civil registry where migrants from the interior would document their newborns, newly deceased and newlyweds. Piri called it a job for slackers: pushing the buttons on a toy as though your life depended on it, stopping poor people from giving their children gringo names like Johnny, Chuck or Michael and, for entertainment, cheating against yourself at solitaire. He found the concept of a “writing machine” completely ridiculous, since we were used to the brutal machines that converted meat into a shapeless, reddish blob and then into chorizo.

We read it in The Buenos Aires Review.