Size / / /

Middle-aged and bifocaled, she waits at the stop sign for them to fly past,

windows open to welcome the hot air—better than watching through haze.

She grips the wheel, each new wrinkle on her hand another impossibility

between them.  Out of time.  Displaced person.  She is not supposed to be there,

her silence like a cancer—and everything vinegar on her tongue.

She is afraid to blink, to miss them, while the ice cream melts in her trunk.

Suddenly they ride with eyes ablaze, unfettered and invincible for fifteen minutes,

charging past cars, ignoring traffic lights.  There is freedom in each small rebellion.

 

The oldest with his curly hair and wild eyebrows seems to recognize her.

His mouth a full grin, his braces shining, he winks with a fleeting confidence that only comes

on two wheels in motion.  Fearless and beautiful in awkward angles,

he is like all the boys from books she adored when she was young; clever boys

with secrets—closet skeletons, noble hearts, and stepmothers' curses.

 

The bikes whir and flap, playing cards clipped to their spokes with clothespins,

and as the youngest passes, she sees the seven of clubs fastened to one wheel,

punctuating his ride with a clack-clack-clack that brings the bike one step closer

to the roar of a motorcycle.  She watches her brothers as they turn the corner

and rise up off the ground, trading wheels for wings, leaving this world behind—

endangered and unstoppable.  On the seat beside her, under needles and starwort,

are six shirts tear-stained, one still not finished, and behind her the siren draws near.



Valya Dudycz Lupescu is the author of The Silence of Trees and founding editor of Conclave: A Journal of Character. Her poetry and prose have been published in Gone Lawn, Jersey Devil Press, Mythic Delirium, Danse Macabre, Fickle Muses, Abyss & Apex, Pedestal Magazine, Doorknobs & Bodypaint, and other places. Since earning her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Valya has worked as a college professor, obituary writer, content manager, goth cocktail waitress, and co-producer of an independent feature film. Her first comic book, Sticks & Bones, created with artist Madeline C. Matz, was successfully crowdfunded via kickstarter. They are now working on the next three issues to be published by First Comics. Her website is www.vdlupescu.com.
Current Issue
27 Mar 2023

close calls when / I’m with Thee / dressed to the nines
they took to their heels but the bird was faster.
In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Reviews Editors Aisha Subramanian and Dan Hartland talk to novelist, reviewer, and Strange Horizons’ Co-ordinating Editor, Gautam Bhatia, about how reviewing and criticism of all kinds align—and do not—with fiction-writing and the genre more widely.
If the future is here, but unevenly distributed, then so is the past.
He claims that Redlow used to be a swamp and he has now brought them into the future before the future. Yes he said that.
My previous Short Fiction Treasures column was all about science fiction, so it’s only fair that the theme this time around is fantasy.
I’ve come to think of trans-inclusive worldbuilding as an activist project in itself, or at least analogous to the work of activists. When we imagine other worlds, we have to observe what rules we are creating to govern the characters, institutions, and internal logic in our stories. This means looking at gender from the top down, as a regulatory system, and from the bottom up, at the people on the margins whose bodies and lives stand in some kind of inherent opposition to the system itself.
Wednesday: And Lately, The Sun edited by Calyx Create Group 
Friday: August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White 
Issue 20 Mar 2023
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Issue 13 Feb 2023
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Issue 30 Jan 2023
By: Catherine Rockwood
By: Romie Stott
Podcast read by: Ciro Faienza
Podcast read by: Catherine Rockwood
Podcast read by: Romie Stott
Podcast read by: Maureen Kincaid Speller
Issue 23 Jan 2023
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