The dog blames me, refuses to poop for five days. The sixth day, he betrays himself and does his business on Joan Sellers’s lawn. Joan stands on my front porch. She’s holding a bag of dog excrement. “Is this yours?”  “Sorry, Joan. I’m out of bags.”  “The HOA has rules. My granddaughter almost stepped in…

Iris had done well for herself and so wanted to invest in some land: something reliable and permanent, a sound investment. She’d saved for eighteen years; she cashed out her 401k. After months of site visits, she had found the most charming plot of land in the city. She was sure of it. Unlike her…

The Earth dipped beneath the crater and it was all so beautiful that we thought for a moment we were going to be okay.  We lay on our backs in the crater, embroidered moons stitched over our hearts, still wearing our school uniforms because we never made it home.  “Do you think someone will find…

Flotsam No survivors. A boat sunk in the middle of the ocean still makes a sound. Of submarines lost during World War II, many were never found. Their exact locations unknown, the mapping imprecise, the currents of the ocean bearing away the traces. Some were found decades later, young children of men who had died…

I I was standing outside the Mall of New Hampshire, waiting for the 8 bus, when this wiry little woman with sunken eyes and brown teeth asked to bum a cigarette. She was dragging a comically large duffle bag behind her, and she moved her body in small, erratic bursts. I flipped open my pack…

As my performance reviews indicate, I exceed proficiency in hygiene, punctuality, theoretical modeling, and inconspicuous ambiance. My problem is physics: Newton, the apple, light bending through prisms into rainbows and whatnot. And vibration.

Our neighbors have picked up a firework habit. It’s emotional regulation, they say. Never mind the burn bans and drought, the sleeping children and anxious dogs, the calls to the police and the subsequent fines. Their son aces a spelling test? Roman candles. Their daughter goes on her first date? Sparklers.  Their father loses his…

Starting soon after her mother’s death, five flashes of light began to shine through her bedroom window, every morning at five a.m.  The first time it happened, she was in a reoccurring dream in which she walked through a dark forest, arms swinging, body so weightless she sometimes floated.  In her dream the night sky…

Doctor Hornicker adjusted his instrument and examined the eye again. He hadn’t been mistaken: within the dilated pupil he could see the universe laid bare. He considered whether it might be a trick of the light, and was conscious of the lunch that still lingered on his breath. “It’s perfectly natural for our eyes to…

The Hoffman’s central employee at the candy store was their son, Gene. Post-collegiate in age and with a number of partially completed degrees, Gene had sampled a wide range of occupations without finalizing a commitment to any: hotel groundskeeper, stand-up comic, phlebotomist, dog groomer, volunteer police officer. To Gene, life was a series of masks—we…

Dick loves the powerful engine. Jane the safety. The twins love different things about the bright red wagon. Alice—the new car smell. Andy—opening and closing a window with the press of a button. On sunny weekend afternoons, Dick washes and waxes the car, nodding as he polishes the chrome door handles. He was right to…

A low-grade hum from outside brings you back from your thoughts of leaving. You run to ask your wife if she heard the noise. But she’s not in the bedroom or anywhere in the house. Nor are the kids. You phone her sister, see if your wife showed up there. The line’s down, but you…