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For each question below, use red ink to circle the option that best describes your beliefs. Please do not omit any questions. While undertaking this exercise, it is ideal to repress your perceptions of climate change, sexuality- and gender-based violence, or white supremacist activities occurring in your immediate vicinity. If answering these questions distresses you, you may wish to consult a herpetologist.

1. a) Rage is a terror, a murderous unholy apocalypse.
b) Without rage blazing in my gut, I cannot fly.

2. a) Greenhouse gas emissions and rising sea levels constitute increasingly urgent conundrums.
b) The flames erupting from my nostrils sometimes prevent me from enjoying a good night’s sleep.

3. a) Refugee children should not be caged at U.S. borders.
b) Refugee children should not be caged at U.S. borders.

4. a) Poems should create joy, lifting us out of grief and terror.
b) My eyes are slitted but I can see you just fine with your needle-sword, your tinfoil helmet. I am only pretending to doze as, on tiptoes, you approach your doom.

5. a) People who say, “Oh, I don’t pay attention to politics” are difficult to converse with.
b) [gout of stinking fire]

6. a) Violence is bad.
b) Yes, it is very bad.

7. a) Then why have you become so ugly? Anger is a toxin. A woman needs to let it go.
b) It is easier to release poison when the shadow of your enormous wings blights the countryside. Then, like a dried-up dream or fading leaf, it drops away.



Lesley Wheeler’s newest poetry collection is The State She’s In; her first novel, Unbecomingwas published by Aqueduct Press in May 2020. Poetry Editor of Shenandoahshe lives in Virginia.
Current Issue
2 Dec 2024

For nine straight miles, the hot-rolled steel rails cut a path through the woods, a metal chain thrown into soft mud. Discarded, rotting railroad ties littered the tracksides, the stench of creosote saturating the forest air until birds no longer frequented the trees.
I didn’t complain about him / being a werewolf / He thought I didn’t know
Dark against the sky of steel / And men gather to get to its top
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents A Cure for Solastalgia by E.M. Linden, read by Jenna Hanchley. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
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