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     for Silvia Gasparini

You teach me patience, send jars of sunlight
that require careful straining. Your children

spin gold from acacia and rose, turn blood shades
into caring sweetness. You did not know me

from either inhabitant of Eden, but still you threw
wide your garden gates and said: Come, taste.

Whence I've come in such condition—my wings
in shreds, hum broken—you took the time to ask.

Now, I take my tea with a fine skim of wax.




AJ's first full-length poetry collection, The Sting of It, was published by Tolsun Books in 2019 and won Best LGBT Book in the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards.  Their first novel, The Pursued and the Pursuing, was published by DartFrog Blue in 2021 and won 2nd place in the Adult Historical Fiction category of the Reads Rainbow Awards.  AJ holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and is a full-time English Faculty member at San Juan College.  AJ has been on staff at Strange Horizons since 2012.  You can find them on Twitter and visit their website.
Current Issue
16 Dec 2024

Across the train tracks from BWI station, a portal shimmered in the shade of a patch of tall trees. From her seat on a northbound train taking on passengers, Dottie watched a woman slip a note out of her pocket, place it under a rock, strip off her work uniform, then walk naked, smiling, into the portal.
exposing to the bone just how different we are
a body protesting thinks itself as a door out of a darkroom, a bullet, too.
In this episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li to discuss her foray into poetry, screenwriting, music composition and more, and also presents a reading of her two poems published in 2022, 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine'.
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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