Size / / /

Content warning:


In a deciduous maze,
little Lego wakes up
after a millennium
of cowardice.

His timid, minifigure self, constructed to be a toy,
annealed mixture of
bias and xenophobia,
escaped to the dreamland
in a storm, an evolution swept his nation
Malus Domestica.

Wild plastic blossoms
have flourished. Promiscuous
pomes have divided and conquered
every interlocking spaces. Strayed
in a retrograde amnesia, his memory
is coming back as bits and pieces.

"The Genesis is over,
You have no more chances."
With an apple falling on his head
he hears Iðunn's giggle
and turns wide awake

and runs through the barricade
of pedicels and vines, swings his
short arms and forky hands. His spiritus,
combusting, nervous,
antsy respiration kindles
the white LEDs under his feet, when he comes close
to his old home, an antique city built inside
Citrus Sinensis.
At the end of the road
a wide world opens in front of him:

light, pollens, hexagons
anti-gravitating in the air.
Miss Halictida,
are dancing with satin skirts
in the halo of carpenter bees.
"A rule of creative destruction,
he can never learn to embrace."

Sitting by his honey kylix
Osmia Lignaria, The Wise Bee of Alveus,
greatest skald of the Eusocial, sarcastically
depicts in his fiction, 1734,
during the industrial revolution,

and the Pollinator Protest.
"With the conservative belief
he is back to hibernation, in despondence
for another thousand years."




Liu Chengyu came from China nine years ago and is currently living in San Diego. He loves poetry and doing research on proteins. You are welcome to read his previous works in Strange Horizons, Aphelion, Grievous Angel, Silver Blade, and Abyss & Apex.
Current Issue
16 Sep 2024

A whale soars over Brooklyn. Clouds spread in streaks over the pale blue sky like cold butter. And the whale cleaves right through. Dar spots it from his perch on the rooftop, smoking a contraband cigarette. At first, it looks like the whale is just playing. Bobbing in and out of the clouds the way calves do during their migratory season. But the whale is too large to be a calf; it casts a shadow over the entire block as it glides directly overhead.
there’s a word—but it’s gone, stolen, seized in the raid; the others have it now
rain / tinged with lavender, mild scent / of rot and freshness.
Wednesday: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older 
Friday: Shadows Rising by Rohan Monterio 
Issue 9 Sep 2024
Issue 2 Sep 2024
Issue 26 Aug 2024
Issue 19 Aug 2024
Issue 12 Aug 2024
Issue 5 Aug 2024
Issue 29 Jul 2024
Issue 15 Jul 2024
Issue 8 Jul 2024
Issue 1 Jul 2024
Load More