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When the wolves come,
    don’t blink,
    don’t move,
    don’t fear—
they will howl at the door,
nightmares of bones
    and snarl,
but they are just men
in clever clothing, softly
    self-righteous,
fragile in the way
of water, always seeking
mouths for drowning—
    do not offer yours.

When the battle begins,
    breathe,
    do not set yourself
      aflame,
    do not fall upon your sword,
    do not let your courage
      fade—
square your shoulders,
remember, you are not alone,
    and you have fury
      as well as faith—
    do not cower.

When the singing of sirens starts,
    hold the note
      they offer,
    be the myth
      and the rock
    and the lighthouse
    without apology,
tell the story
      your way—
    do not hold back.

There is no villain
    no hero, no woman
holding a sword in a lake—
    but the magick holds,
The Magician, The High Priestess
    a reminder
to set the spell down
    word after word,
    to be a warning
to all those who might forget
    your power,
    to summon hope
even in the gathered dark,
even in the storm-sway—
    conjure the truth into being,
    set it in stone
      and let it blaze,
    you know who you are,
      darling,

do not look away.

 
 
 
[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift on behalf of Carlos Hernandez during our annual Kickstarter.]



Ali Trotta is an award-nominated poet, a word-nerd, and an unapologetic coffee addict. Find her poetry in Uncanny, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Small Wonders, The Deadlands, Fireside, Cicada, Nightmare, Mermaids Monthly, and The Best of Uncanny Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Worlds of Possibilities. Website: alitrotta.com, Newsletter: buttondown.email/alwayscoffee, Bluesky: @alwayscoffee, and Instagram: @alwayscoffee7.
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.
Friday: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon 
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By: Alexandra Munck
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Issue 13 Jan 2025
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