"The Conquistadors of Los Angeles" by Kim Ponders

Deep emotion is just that. It’s there and it won’t go away no matter how long ago. In this story by Kim Ponders about a woman’s longing after a lost love affair, beautiful language and imagery evoke the true work of emotion. The voice is mesmerizing because it seamlessly straddles the practical, and the longing; the professional woman on travel with colleagues, and feeling the immediacy of her former lover. After all these years, she admits what she wants: “I wanted him only the way he was before he’d fled to Los Angeles, in that particular way he had of clinging to me and pushing me back, with all of us suspended inside the possibility of what would come next.” There is a dark compulsive nature to this voice that recalls a similar one in Lydia Davis’ novel, The End of the Story. Both are masters of language. Keying in just under 4,000 words, read Ponders’ short story here in the Mississippi Review.