Finnegan wasn’t the first to discover the cat. His dog was, as Finnegan was pulled forcefully to the brush where the grimalkin was huddled. Close to death it seemed.

Finnegan unclasped the leash and walked away.

A young girl and her father sit on a bench and stare into the lake. They are stuck this way forever. From here on out, they must focus unblinking on the way it does not ripple, how no stone may enter and how no fish can leave. Across the park, a squirrel clings to a tree, his heart always exploding, a white dog snapping at his tail. The water reflects the moon and calls down the night, pocked with clouds– the sky split in two, half of it black, half of it blue; there is no color where they merge.

From Guest Contributor, Jeremy S. Griffin

Late afternoon, Tuesday, I have gathered sixteen leaves into four stacks, and a dog wanders closer to my clean patch of dirt and moss, and this book of symbols is open to the first page on interlocking circles, and four hours of collecting hues through a borrowed lens feels too brief, and this final autumn egg sits askew, broken open, sticky, not drying fast enough, and the dog is coming too close, coming soon, and some winter begins collecting itself near hatchings left to wander into this too early night, and I stand, bend at the waist, and look inside.

From Guest Contributor, Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri. She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, from John Gosslee Books (2012) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

It was once a daily ritual I looked forward to.

Now it was the most agitated moment of my routine, wondering if today was the day she had decided to poison me.

There is a shrine on a small Pacific island that was intended to be an agnostic memorial saluting the bravery and sacrifice on both sides. So many years have gone by, however, that memories of that battle have become obscured, much as the shrine itself has been weighed down by lichen and neglect.

People still visit the shrine and leave tributes. They aren’t for the fallen soldiers, but for one particular dog who remained on that spot for ten years after his master was killed. He is remembered as the loyal dog and people mourn him more than any soldier.

They wanted to build condominiums there, but when the construction crew arrived, Rufus scared them away.

Rufus would die before he allowed anyone to take away his field.

As a boy, Howard dreamed of giant spiders in his father’s tool shed. They were black with red spots and the size of a large dog.

It turns out that giant spiders thrive on tomato sauce.

The technology was overwhelming at first, but as with all revolutions, people adapted eventually. The rose-colored glasses, as they were called, physically altered your appearance to more closely correspond to how people perceive you. The ads all showed some variation of a wife looking at her husband and seeing an Olympic athlete.

But Malcolm never quite accepted the way the device changed him so ruthlessly, to the point he had completely lost control of his appearance. It was especially distasteful to find the dog staring up at him and knowing that it was seeing a giant slab of raw meat.

The Daily Theme from Figment for February 27, 2012

Describe the day in the life of a character who has been punished or honored with wearing a physical badge of how he or she is viewed by the world.

Most people looked at my behavior with quiet condescension.

Even today, I would trade twenty years of marriage to have Higgins back.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A man walks into a bar–”

“No, that one I’ve heard. Tell the new one.”