Three Microfictions from Kate Simonian

Editor-in-Chief Jennifer A. Howard on today's bonus stories: Today’s microfictions from Kate Simonian could fit into the palm of your hand but so does your house key, and they both unlock the way into something big.

A Sad Story

Save last night’s parable till you’ve left me for good, hot-footed from the motel to the taxi-cab to the dust-blasted station, hoisted your suitcase onto its allotted grille and settled your body into the train car. Here it is: a spider is hiding inside a man’s shoe, and he steps on in.

Diurnal

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” you say. I disagree: only night and day made humans think in binary. You reply with your body, fold it into me. Now every thought is one of two halves only.

Cats Looking Out Windows

With no regard for my career I have painted only them, scraping hundreds of bodies from damp oil, abdomens like bloated socks, curved prows, horns of plenty. Heads are chest-buried, jutting finely, feathered with light, purringly smudged. Still eyes look out with majestic expectation.

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Kate Simonian hails from Sydney, Australia. She took her MFA from Brooklyn College (2014) She's currently in her second year of an English PhD at Texas Tech, where she is a Presidential Fellow (2015-2020). Her work has been published by, or is forthcoming in, The Kenyon Review Online, Overland, and Best Australian Stories, and she is an associate editor for Iron Horse.