Possum | Marcie Friedman

"My dog, Hooper, killed a possum in the backyard, and the next morning Ellie Longbottem had her baby. I know there doesn’t seem to be much in common..."

Bad Girl | Kate Jayroe

"Helen lives in my frontal lobe. Sometimes, though, she enjoys lobe-hopping. Full-on parietal. Occipital, every blue moon..."

Turbine | Mitchell Grabois

"This is not a job I ever expected to have, but I couldn’t keep farming, not enough land, machines too old. I retrieve dead birds from the base of wind turbines..."

Rib | Elizabeth Sackett

"Fracture my February, / the apple of your ribcage / and the blinding partition. / This is a calamity; this is something / I should never have bitten..."

Six Words | Diana Wagman

Diana Wagman is the author of five novels, and her short stories and essays have been published in Conjunctions, The Colorado Review, and The Los Angeles Times.

The Fisherman | Christie Wilson

"All fishermen know that half full nets weigh much more than the sum of their contents; they also bear the emotional heft of the incomplete, the left undone..."