The only time I visited Times Square a stranger with a limp brushed my arm and I can best describe the touch as sideways—a disorienting touch that vibrated like a distant gunshot—and it revealed one thing about the world: molecules collide, then move on.
You Become a Cartoon Fox by Doug Cornett
The moment you become a cartoon fox, you feel a warm fluidity to your bones. You look down at yourself and discover you are wearing a scarlet vest and orange pantaloons, bouncing through some neon green field. You think, “I’ve never looked good in red,” and the thought itself appears above you in a puffy cloud. You are dimly aware of a change overtaking you….
Wood Duck by Ross McMeekin
The rest are mallards, but then there’s this other one. You’ve never heard your boyfriend use the word plumage before, never iridescent. You wonder how many other words he keeps hidden, waiting for an object to emerge to tote them out into the open. Take a picture of it, he says, and you try. But it’s as if the duck knows exactly what you’re up…
Sleep by Kurt Mueller
The doctor asked if I wanted to do it. I didn’t answer. He pushed the needle under her skin and depressed the plunger and she didn’t move, didn’t raise her head to look at me even one last time. I kept my hands on her like I could push her back to life. The doctor threw the needle in the sharps bucket and took off…
Zero Girl by Allie Marini Batts
The office was mostly empty, as usual, and the lights were still off when I got in to work just before eight. I dropped my backpack at my desk and headed straight for the breakroom to put on coffee and watch it, because even though there were only a few other people here, if I turned my back for even the briefest second, there would…