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With ink I feathered you, at your fingertips sketched

storm-static and the dust of masks, set crooked all

the haloes of a holy fool to crown you double-tongued

and quicksilver: this hand of faces you dealt yourself

in pasteboard riddles and commedia deadpan, that now

I shuffle like a cadenza to hand back as slant and true

as any con: pick a card, my lovely assistant, any card.

We two only, we know: they are marked all with your name.




Sonya Taaffe reads dead languages and tells living stories. Her short fiction and poetry have been collected most recently in As the Tide Came Flowing In (Nekyia Press) and previously in Singing Innocence and Experience, Postcards from the Province of HyphensA Mayse-Bikhl, Ghost Signs, and the Lambda-nominated Forget the Sleepless Shores. She lives with one of her husbands and both of her cats in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she writes about film for Patreon and remains proud of naming a Kuiper Belt object.
Current Issue
23 Jun 2025

It's not that I exactly believe in them, see. It’s just, why would you risk saying you don’t?
They said to try removing my toxins.
stringing webs between cloud wisps
Wednesday: Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield 
Friday: The Hampdenshire Wonder by J.D. Beresford 
Issue 16 Jun 2025
By: Ariel Marken Jack
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 9 Jun 2025
Issue 8 Jun 2025
The Ache of Hollow Places 
In the Year of the Wedding 
Do Ghosts Have Department Stores? 
Wednesday: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 
Issue 2 Jun 2025
By: R.B. Lemberg
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 May 2025
Issue 19 May 2025
By: Elle Engel
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 12 May 2025
Issue 5 May 2025
Issue 21 Apr 2025
By: Premee Mohamed
Podcast read by: Kat Kourbeti
Issue 14 Apr 2025
Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons
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