Size / / /

So Rock created stone in his own image

in the image of Rock created he stone

one gender created he stone

and Rock spit on stone

and Rock said unto stone

Split yourself into many

and cover the earth

and stone did so and

some were fiery, eruptive and flowing

some were grainy, coarse and wind-strewn

some captured animals and

desiccated their spirits

entombing their skeletons in outline forever

and some buried animals by their force

but most were hard and enduring

so while animals lived and died upon them

they persisted

through the ages

calcite, seared the blazing orb of the sun,

sodalite, painted the sea-reflected-into-sky,

selenite, tinted the colorless echo of stars,

gaspeite, dyed the skin of rain-bringing frogs,

rhodochrosite, tinged the burn of cherry buds,

hematite, glazed the grittiness of soil,

malachite, hued the verdant of pasture lands,

and dolomite, banded the blood of human flesh,

until one day Rock called them home,

all his creation

strip-stippled into the stains of the rainbow

and shining over a barren earth.




Holly Cooley lives on an island called Paradise in a Florida lake. She has a PhD in Medieval and Victorian Literature. Her poems have been published by or will soon appear in Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit and Dragons, Knights & Angels.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
Issue 18 Mar 2024
Strange Horizons
Issue 11 Mar 2024
Issue 4 Mar 2024
Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
Issue 5 Feb 2024
Issue 29 Jan 2024
Issue 15 Jan 2024
Issue 8 Jan 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: