The short story, by its very nature, requires a distinctive form of economy in both lexical choice and the deployment of narrative elements. Accordingly, narrative techniques such as narrative compression, image-centered narration, and lyrical structures can be examined within this framework. Among these techniques, imagistic parallelism functions as one of the foregrounding devices that organizes narrative structure and reinforces story elements. Particularly in contemporary modern short stories, which frequently focus on lyrical themes and individual experience, imagistic parallelism provides an effective means of employing narrative elements economically while preserving structural unity and enhancing the reader's aesthetic engagement. This general framework is also applicable to contemporary Persian short fiction. Drawing on a descriptive-analytical approach, the present study examines five contemporary Persian short stories with lyrical and modern themes to investigate the manifestation of imagistic parallelism and its contribution to narrative elements. The findings indicate that imagistic parallelism operates across four principal domains—event, characterization, description, and theme—by establishing implicit correspondences between images and situations, thereby conveying deeper layers of meaning without explicit exposition. The analysis further demonstrates that imagistic parallelism frequently interacts with other foregrounding devices, including allegory, metaphor, symbolism, and simile, and through this interaction contributes to the foregrounding of narrative elements. Accordingly, within the corpus examined, imagistic parallelism functions not only as a means of narrative economy and organic unity but also as a significant foregrounding device in contemporary Persian short fiction.