Size / / /

A universe collided
headlong with ours
and was unintentionally
bruised; such play as
spawn or beer on working
days, or mouth to mouth
with the neighbor boy
ashen gray. Nine months
of pregnancy is ladled
by heaven into flames and
these anticipate street lamps,
and are cannily beautiful and
afraid. They flee at larger light
and we wake and
motion them away, your
feet lifted and I feeding
your beak. What is
the significance, the
use of being sparrows
trapped in passageways?




Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Aldrich Press, 2014). The Huffington Post described his work as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them." The creator of the Meaning Of Poetry Series for The Project Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida. His website is www.charlesbanejr.com.
Current Issue
7 Jul 2025

i and màmá, two moons, two eclipsed suns.
Tell me, can God sing / like a katydid; cicada-bellow / for the seventeen silent years?
In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland speaks with reviewers and critics Rachel Cordasco and Will McMahon about science fiction in translation.
Thursday: Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani 
Friday: BUG by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall 
Issue 30 Jun 2025
Issue 23 Jun 2025
Issue 16 Jun 2025
By: Ariel Marken Jack
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 9 Jun 2025
Issue 8 Jun 2025
Issue 2 Jun 2025
By: R.B. Lemberg
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 May 2025
Issue 19 May 2025
By: Elle Engel
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 12 May 2025
Issue 5 May 2025
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