Size / / /

The lizards were everywhere

and so was the wind.

There was no way you could

keep either of them out

that hard spring.

No matter how swiftly

you shut the door,

the lizards and the wind

would slip inside

that hard spring.

Darting over the floor

with inhuman speed,

they were far too fast

for a novice human

predator such as you.

The lizards were like

lemmings rushing

blindly over a cliff side:

there was no way

they could survive inside.

You would eventually

find their bodies,

dead and desiccated,

beneath a desk or armchair.

And once under the coverlet,

centered on your sheet

carefully as if a draftsman

had placed it there.

But the wind never died

that hard spring.




Bruce Boston is the author of forty-seven books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read more about him at www.bruceboston.com and see some of his previous work in our archives.
Current Issue
15 Apr 2024

By: Ana Hurtado
Art by: delila
I want to sink my faces into the hot spring and see which one comes out breathing. I’m hoping it’s mine.
Mnemonic skills test positive: inaccurately positive.
pallid growths like toadstools, / and scuttling many-legged things,
Wednesday: How I Killed the Universal Man by Thomas Kendall 
Issue 8 Apr 2024
Issue 1 Apr 2024
Issue 25 Mar 2024
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
Issue 18 Mar 2024
Strange Horizons
Issue 11 Mar 2024
Issue 4 Mar 2024
Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
Issue 5 Feb 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: