The boss’s boss wishes to see me regarding a promotion, or to fire me. Buzz of each featured in breakroom discussions. I straighten my clothes, exhale before heading into the big cheese’s inner sanctum. Ready and willing to lead the Midwest division. Or box up my desk. People are talking.

Todd Mercer won a Dyer-Ives Poetry Prize (2022) for “Overextended” and had “The Drive to Experience Weightlessness” long-listed for this year’s Micro Madness Awards at Flash Frontier. Recent work appears in Best of Plum Tree Tavern, Dunes Review, and Spartan.