Riya Anne Polcastro

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020

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“Bread & Water” by Riya Anne Polcastro

Submitted to Contest #102

The first time my father calls me a joto,[1] I am five. I don’t know what the word means yet, but I know what he means by the hate in his eyes, the rage on his lips, the disgust on his tongue as he spits it out—¡joto! Like chunks of sour milk in his coffee. Like a mouthful of blood. Like a fly that had the gall to die in his beer—¡joto! The word reaches across the breakfast table and smacks me across the face, sucks the air from my lungs, rips my world out from under me. Then he does. With his big meaty hand. With his grip like a vice. He re...

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Author bio

Riya Anne Polcastro is the author of numerous transgressive experimental novels including Jane, Dentata, and the forthcoming Spanglish young adult fiction Popcorn 4 Dinner, Traff'kd @ Midnight (Palomitas Para Cena, Traficado en la Madrugada). Her work has appeared in The Anti-Austerity Anthology, When the World Stopped, and Twisted Anatomy. She likes to think her best work would be what happened if Leo Tolstoy and Chuck Palahniuk had a baby but no one has had the heart to tell her how just how impossible that is. Polcastro lives in the Pacific NorthWest where she enjoys taking photographs of dead things and directing shoots for Murderline Images.