Size / / /

Content warning:


What god has joined together let no man separate.

Just who do we think we are,
pulling apart atoms
knowing accidents happen?

What god has joined together let no man separate.

But a woman—she’s not afraid of the dirty work, of elbow grease.
She is well-acquainted with being picked apart piece-by-piece.

A woman is

separate, always—she must be, setting herself apart and above.
Can’t afford to be mediocre in a room full of men; it costs too much.

A woman is

no man, given a choice
between life and death, between heaven and health.
What can she choose? What she does
she always does for the good of her crew.

Talk about hell.

What god has joined together:

let it be damned. He’s not the Captain of this fucking ship,
phaser on hip.
I am.

Joined together with every being
whose very body has been taken,
who’s ever not had a say
in what happened to them.

A woman

knows what it means to have her body disassembled
and put back together the wrong way.

A woman

knows how it feels to be left bleeding on a table
because she’s not allowed to breathe
if it means killing what could have been.

We know accidents happen.

What god would do something like that?



Jordan Hirsch writes speculative fiction and poetry while occupying the ancestral and current homelands of the Dakota people, Mni Sota Makoce. Her work has appeared in The Future Fire, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and other venues. Find more of her writing on jordanrhirsch.wordpress.com, and her thoughts on Bluesky: @jordanrhirsch.bsky.social.
Current Issue
31 Mar 2025

We are delighted to present to you our second special issue of the year. This one is devoted to ageing and SFF, a theme that is ever-present (including in its absence) in the genre.
Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.
does the comb understand the vocabulary of hair. Or the not-so-close-pixels of desires even unjoined shape up to become a boat
The birds have flown long ago. But the body, the body is like this: it has swallowed the smaller moon and now it wants to keep it.
now, be-barked / I am finally enough
how you gazed on our red land beside me / then how you traveled it, your eyes gone silver
Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how the Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.
In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendlesohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.
Issue 24 Mar 2025
Issue 17 Mar 2025
Issue 10 Mar 2025
By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 3 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Feb 2025
Issue 17 Feb 2025
Issue 10 Feb 2025
By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 27 Jan 2025
By: River
Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Jan 2025
Load More