Cleopatra the Alligator Empress and What She Left Behind,
Kimberly Lojewski
“Coriander likes to ride possum-belly on top of cow crates, sipping ginger brandy from a flask, and letting the sixty mile an hour winds slough the chapped skin off her arms and legs. She has dusted the Mojave Desert with her scales. She has smelled the entire length of the Pacific Ocean travelling at 75 mph.”

Murmuration, Ryan Werner
“We’ve got eleven pudding cups and zero dogs and I need to find the right way to bring those two numbers closer together. I go outside to bury the dog real quick and then hurry back inside to sit underneath the piano and eat as many of the pudding cups as I can. The trick is to not get a spoon dirty — no dishes — by taking the lid and curling it into a tongue shape. There is no trick for the dog thing.”

The Last Bird, y.t. sumner
“There’s a place called The Factory where they sell stuff. Mili’s mum went there when she was a kid, but they screwed up her order and she got Mili instead. She always sighed nicely when she told this story, but it was obvious that the years of litigation had worn her down.”

The Artist and the Asterisk, Hilary Gan
“In the town of Guell, in the province of Calana, lived a young bullfighter by the name of Victor. He was of average height but he was very handsome, and when he went striding through the city streets beneath the power lines all the women looked up at him through their eyelashes and smiled heart-shaped smiles. But when he smiled back he used only his lips, and kept his own heart to himself.”

Cover art: Fictional Ruins and Finger Bang, Jon Snoek