Size / / /

The train slides toward the hill-concealed horizon,

a mammoth serpent winding through the tall grass,

its strange steel-skeletal cars stacked with stranger cargo,

men and women, naked as newborns, crisscrossed eight high

in neat columns, interlocking puzzle towers of flesh.

Car thrown into park, I step out, squint down, but I'm

too far yet to tell whether I'm staring at slick synthetics

or true skin; they're perfect: trim and muscular, no

birthmarks to see, no moles, a eugenicist's wet dream;

yet sexless, static, faces blank as brain death,

a promenade of empty shells, automatons,

an android shipment, enough to fill a city, etch

personalities, watch a culture come to life. I wonder

what doctrines, what dogma, what commands

are waiting to be written on their minds?

A rich demagogue's androgynous harem, perhaps,

swarming their master like bees on their queen?

Or an instant cult, ready-made worshipers,

undying faithful to light torches in the catacombs?

Impervious soldiers, trained with a download,

storming distant deserts or jungle against others

of their own kind, or even others of mine?

Underwater miners or void-bound farmers

unafflicted by a need to breathe, raising air-filled

domes to make more space for their makers?

Pitiful, beautiful slaves, bound

for existence (hardly a life)

without choice; no one would want

to be one of you, no; but then why

do I feel such envy?




Mike Allen is president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and editor of the speculative poetry journal Mythic Delirium. With Roger Dutcher, Mike is also editor of The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, which for the first time collects the Rhysling Award-winning poems from 1978 to 2004 in one volume. His newest poetry collection, Disturbing Muses, is out from Prime Books, with a second collection, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead, soon to follow. Mike's poems can also be found in Nebula Awards Showcase 2005, both editions of The 2005 Rhysling Anthology, and the Strange Horizons archives.
Current Issue
27 Nov 2023

you no longer have image. in photos your cheek² sharpens, vectors.
That cis-tem is now only a speck.
Mushrooms didn’t exactly sweep sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but much like their real-world inspiration they persisted, growing in the damp, dark crevices of the creative minds of every generation. They were a template for the anxieties of each age, seasoned with the fears of the era.
Stories of extensive evil, in which the threat is not a single villain, nor even a man-made pollution monster, but systemic structures of harm in which we are all complicit, offer tools to think through real-life problems, which are rarely fixed by defeating one villain.
Writing While Disabled 
Well, when people say writing every day, I think some people take it too literally. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about writing every day. People use the term dailyness to mean consistency. Write Consistently. Time-wise, write consistently. You build a practice. Because remember what I said earlier, a writer is someone who writes. It's about being in the present. Writing has to be a present practice for you. That's all it means.
My most hearty and luxurious greetings fam, hope all are doing well. Friends, I feel like I often start this column by saying I can’t remember what happened in the previous episode. Today, I honestly cannot remember a single thing that happened last time. Fam, so many things happened lately and my brain has been all over the place. I had to move! I am getting too old for this kind of lifestyle and now I’m not going to unpack anything because I will just have to repack and move again at some point. I don’t know if that is
Wednesday: Angel of Death: Dearly Departed by Ralynn Kimie 
Issue 20 Nov 2023
Issue 13 Nov 2023
Issue 6 Nov 2023
Issue 30 Oct 2023
Issue 16 Oct 2023
Issue 9 Oct 2023
Issue 2 Oct 2023
Issue 25 Sep 2023
Issue 18 Sep 2023
Issue 11 Sep 2023
Load More
%d bloggers like this: