Size / / /

Whenever, and whatever we are doing,

we always stop and watch

when the clouds of paradise

go rolling by.

We see the chosen revelers

in their endless cosmic dance.

We imagine the joy upon their faces

and the glory shining in their eyes.

Every now and then one dances too

close to the edge of their puffy

stratosphere and tumbles far

to the Earth below.

Their shattered forms

scattered across the landscape

share our legends and domain.

When the night is clear,

the sky free of paradise clouds

and others of less distinction,

when the moon is yet to be born,

the stars are at their brightest.

We can see the ancient light

from elliptical galaxy M83,

traveling at outrageous speed

from the spacious heart of Virgo.




Bruce Boston is the author of forty-seven books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read more about him at www.bruceboston.com and see some of his previous work in our archives.
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: