The moment Hans saw the postcard-sized, paint-by-number picture of a labrador on his manager’s desk, he knew he was in trouble. The frame was expensive-looking and made of dark, exotic wood. It was turned slightly towards him, so he could see it but still think the picture was placed there for Mr. Ashfeldt’s own viewing…

Midday — and a crowded city square. Even on a weekday it’s busy with tourists and locals: standing, strolling, or sitting. Meantime the pigeons flock, like vultures. This place is a pivot upon which the city spins, and I myself have agreed to or engineered many a meeting here, perched quietly on the fountain ledge,…

My support for the previous mayor caused indignation among my friends. Even Carola, who never voiced an opinion and never ever lost her shit, called me a fascist snob after I defended said mayor’s policies of cleaning the streets of vendors. Then, as often happens in politics, the pendulum swung — a populist mayor was…

My daughter likes me to tell her stories before bed. She keeps quiet as I try to weave something meaningful with words, her eyebrows knitted in concentration. Being a parent in the evening is wretched — arguments over bowel movements, hallway lights, and the angles of doors fill your time, when you desperately want them…

When you and I turned into snails, I tore myself from my shell, and we squeezed into yours. We pressed against your spirals, and they stabbed my flesh, made me secrete unintentionally. But you laughed about it and scooched over for me. When we puffed into nebulas, I had to squint my cat’s eye, compress…

who chased her boy. who wasn’t playing a duck and goose game, but cocked her soft jaw and sprinted with the arrow eye of a coyote on a hare. who’d been made both fast and slow by the boy. who shoved open the restaurant’s double doors quickly but carefully because her mission was to escape…

And the day came when Jose told his wife that climate change was a fact and love was no longer a reliable basis for marriage. At first, she assumed he was reading headlines aloud, but then she understood. It had been wrong for her to get a tattoo without including him. The things they’d shared…

For many years I lived alone with my cat. I worked at a job like everyone else, but I only shared my life with my cat. He’d been my mother’s cat before she died and, at the moment she died I’d seen his shadow in the window. He was a marmalade cat, an unneutered tom…

It’s an honor for me to even have been invited to this seaside post mortem exam. I’m only a second-year grad student, and the next lowest ranking academic to attend the cetacean necropsy is a post-doc from my department named Ismael. He’s the one who invited me, and I am grateful for the opportunity —…

You do this work long enough, you find one. Lupe opened the door on a couple who had OD’d in their underwear, a needle hanging from the woman’s arm. Marcia found a rich man sprawled on his back beside a bottle of Cialis, his dick still hard when the EMTs rushed in. Most of them…

This is a kind of love story. The kind of love when the world is war. + Nineteen and restless, she waited for news. Her sweetheart, Albert, fighting over there. Somewhere outside France. The flowers bloomed anyway. + Before the day withered, she gathered eggs. Pale and brown. As varied as skin. She cradled them…

They emerge naked from the sea. They are blue-faced after swallowing lungfuls of air, their long, fat legs wobbling to hold their bodies upright. They speak in a language consisting only of mimicking fishes’ soft-spoken blub-blub-blub. Their straggly hair is tangled with seaweed and dead fish. They do not know how to close their eyes…