Size / / /

Feel how the walls freeze and can't breathe.

Absurd as children flapping arms, the alien spaceboats

cycle through the airlock. Confront the things. Speak

of safety, of this fragile sheath,

practicalities of gravity, and, afloat,

feel how the walls freeze and can't breathe.

Reply to their red and golden physique

of sly heat, their flickering tendrilled bloat.

Cycle through the airlock. Confront the things. Speak

of trade, the consequences of failure. Seethe.

Try sign language, semaphore, a series of notes.

Feel how the walls freeze and can't breathe.

Your breath, unnecessarily loud in your helmet, halts

in your throat.

Feel how the walls freeze and can't breathe.

Cycle through the airlock. Confront the things. Speak.




Joanne Merriam is the publisher at Upper Rubber Boot Books. She is a new American living in Nashville, having immigrated from Nova Scotia. She most recently edited Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good, and her own poetry has appeared in dozens of places including Asimov's, The Fiddlehead, Grain, and previously in Strange Horizons.
Current Issue
27 Nov 2023

you no longer have image. in photos your cheek² sharpens, vectors.
That cis-tem is now only a speck.
Mushrooms didn’t exactly sweep sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but much like their real-world inspiration they persisted, growing in the damp, dark crevices of the creative minds of every generation. They were a template for the anxieties of each age, seasoned with the fears of the era.
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My most hearty and luxurious greetings fam, hope all are doing well. Friends, I feel like I often start this column by saying I can’t remember what happened in the previous episode. Today, I honestly cannot remember a single thing that happened last time. Fam, so many things happened lately and my brain has been all over the place. I had to move! I am getting too old for this kind of lifestyle and now I’m not going to unpack anything because I will just have to repack and move again at some point. I don’t know if that is
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