Size / / /

Tonight we drive to the city—in our absence, please negotiate a final settlement with the mole:
we will concede all territory from the driveway to the garage—but no more—and trust
this meets with his satisfaction. We have coped with his tunneling, despite the injunction;
endured his refusal to schedule daytime meetings; and so we rose, at midnight with flashlights,
for conferences in which he hid behind a bush, spoke through his intermediaries—
but I understand the mole must live and work in isolation, and cannot cease his digging,
for his claws are godly spades, and dirt his pleasing material. He knows dirt contains nutrients,
i.e., organic matter, and should not be confused with filth, and he perceives that dirt,
even mixed with broken teeth or spit or tears, remains malleable, and in dirt he can freely breathe,
re-oxygenate his air—in dirt the Holy Spirit blows through him, and behind him as he digs,
he creates mounds, and many are the mounds he has built for the glory of his God.
The mole, I know, is grateful for the velvety fur in which he slides through his tunnel,
for he is an earthworks artist who works in the ancient style and tradition of his clan,
and is vain only in the matter of his tail; he will twist his neck backward to admire it.
He is furious in his concentration, for his craft, he knows, is essential for the Earth to revolve
around the Sun, and when he works in one-pointed Samadhi, he neither eats nor sleeps.




Lisa Bellamy teaches at The Writers Studio. Her chapbook, Nectar, won the Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Tri-QuarterlyThe Sun, New Ohio Review, Calyx, and PANK, among other publications. She won the Fugue Poetry Prize and received honorable mention in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007.
Current Issue
7 Jul 2025

i and màmá, two moons, two eclipsed suns.
Tell me, can God sing / like a katydid; cicada-bellow / for the seventeen silent years?
In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland speaks with reviewers and critics Rachel Cordasco and Will McMahon about science fiction in translation.
Thursday: Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani 
Friday: BUG by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall 
Issue 30 Jun 2025
Issue 23 Jun 2025
Issue 16 Jun 2025
By: Ariel Marken Jack
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 9 Jun 2025
Issue 8 Jun 2025
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
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