Size / / /

Content warning:



She shreds her old life,
plucking primaries like a knife
thrust reversed, rachides
cracked, barbs catching
at this new skin until
trust pulled taut
fractures her peaceful future,
beloveds disbelieving
finery spun from flight,
her word a fairy tale.

Once upon a second time,
she refuses to lose the feathers.
Fed up, she sharpens her beak,
demands a man act
like a crane in love, laughing
at his toes, his ugly gait.
His unrequited trust
pierces her through the sternum.
So what? She's lived this long
with a heart full of holes.



Mary Alexandra Agner writes of dead women, telescopes, and secrets. Her poetry, stories, and nonfiction have appeared in The Cascadia Subduction ZoneShenandoah, and Sky & Telescope, respectively. She can be found online at http://www.pantoum.org.
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: