Size / / /

Some nights I think that the stars

Have died

Already died and these bright photons

Left over

Just waves of luminous spaghetti seen

End on

Millions of years from now will abruptly

Just stop

But I will never know being already

Dead too

Before all the old light is used up

And you

Whoever you are that remain planted

On earth

Will watch the last red-Dopplered quanta

So weary

With distance weighted with despair

Too tired

Even any longer to be but their message

Is clear

At last and you are the ones the

Only ones

Who will ever truly understand this

And believe

That all any person, plant, microbe, fire,

Or rock

Has ever done was to busy itself

With dying

And by now the ambient temperature

Of space

Having held steady at 3 degrees Kelvin

Almost forever

Begins to fall toward the black hole

Of zero

And what will you think as you feel

Yourself go

Wherever all of everything and the light and dark

Have gone




David Lunde is a two-time Rhysling Award-winning poet and translator whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov's SF, Absolute Magnitude, Star*Line, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, New Worlds, Galaxy, Worlds of Fantasy, Whispers, Poetry, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, and many other magazines and anthologies. You can see more of David's work in his published collections Heart Transplants & Other Misappropriations, Blues for Port City, and Instead, in our archives or on his website. You can email David at davelunde@earthlink.net.
Current Issue
16 Dec 2024

Across the train tracks from BWI station, a portal shimmered in the shade of a patch of tall trees. From her seat on a northbound train taking on passengers, Dottie watched a woman slip a note out of her pocket, place it under a rock, strip off her work uniform, then walk naked, smiling, into the portal.
exposing to the bone just how different we are
a body protesting thinks itself as a door out of a darkroom, a bullet, too.
In this episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li to discuss her foray into poetry, screenwriting, music composition and more, and also presents a reading of her two poems published in 2022, 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine'.
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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