angelito | flash fiction by aureleo sans
"When he peacocks and displays his full wingspan, my breath flies away like I want to. He’s the sexiest angel I’ve ever seen..."
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angelito by aureleo sans
Like me, Falcon grows extra hair but then he grows brown feathers and eventually brown wings — soft wings, wings like memory foam pillows. We’ve called him a bird all his life on account of an eye that drifts like a breeze. Now, he’s turned into one. Maybe this is the power of words.
I’m the first person he shows. I can tell he’s scared about how I’ll react. He’s scared about what’s happening to him but I tell him, “Don’t worry. We are all changing all the time.”
His wings are not the working kind; he can’t lift off the ground and I wonder what’s the point of wings that don’t fly. Luz, his Moms, finds out and stars fill her eyes. She says he’s the chosen one come to right us of our wrongs and bring us to our knees and to salvation and that she always knew in her heart of hearts that he was. At the kitchen stove or church pulpit, she crows, boasting that he’s un milagro and will be the first ever saint to come from the hood and then the Pope will definitely have to visit and bless her and her comadres, even Chela who treats men like old shoes, with holy water and everything all the time will be better. She will become the biggest celebrity, like Madonna but you know for reals. She begins advertising the shit out of her “angel son” — what she calls him. She’s so proud, acting like she’s done something big time, but to be honest, not everyone thinks he’s a good thing. People talk:
“El niño es una maldición…”
aureleo sans is a Colombian-American, non-binary, queer, formerly unhoused writer and poet with a disability who resides in San Antonio, Texas. She has been named a Sewanee Writers Conference Scholar, a Tin House Scholar, a Roots Wounds Words Writers Retreat Fellow, a Lambda Literary Fellow, an ASF Workshop Fellow, and a Periplus Fellow. Her work has appeared in Shenandoah, Electric Literature, Passages North, the 2023 Best Micro Fiction Anthology, and elsewhere.
Linda Sormin explores fragility, upheaval, migration, survival, and change through sculpture and site-responsive installations. She was a 2021 and 2023 participant at European Ceramic Workcentre in the Netherlands, creating new work for three exhibitions: Ceramics in the Expanded Field: Sculpture, Performance and the Possibilities of Clay at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, USA (October 16, 2021 - April 2, 2023), No Boundaries at Messums, London, UK, a solo exhibition at Messums, Wiltshire (March 5 – May 1, 2022), and a two-person exhibition at Peach Corner Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark (September 29 – November 5, 2022).
Sormin lives and works in New York City, and is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at New York University. She has taught ceramics at Emily Carr University, Rhode Island School of Design, Sheridan College and Alfred University. Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Sormin moved to Canada with her family at the age of five. She has a BA in English Literature and worked in community development for four years in Thailand and Laos. She received degrees from Andrews University (BA, English Literature, 1993), Sheridan College (Diploma, Craft and Design, 2001) and Alfred University (MFA, Ceramic Art, 2003). Sormin’s work is included in private and public collections including the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC, USA), Gardiner Museum (Toronto, ON, Canada), CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art (Middelfart, Denmark), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY, USA), Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK), Arizona State University Museum, (Tempe, AZ, USA), World Ceramic Exposition (Gyeonggi Province, Korea), and Schein-Joseph Museum of Ceramic Art (Alfred, NY, USA).
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