Size / / /

for Olaf Stapledon

Oh Marlene on the wall: I made you
the angel of your own night sky, glow
(in the dark) brighter than city stars (glitch
-ing streetlights) and closer. Flashbulb celebrity
nebula ready for close-up, the moon's circum-
ference measuring up to a meteor's, similar
to Saturn's. You're encircled by this yearning
to lift the roof & be in among the weather
of the (that [real]) world: walls fall, nightmare
papier mâché melts to let in something stranger—
cat-footed—that holds its breath and stalks
my hurting heart. Oh Marlene, among (other) stars,
(only) in the time we have to live (here) in the dark.




Sophie Mayer is the author of three poetry collections: Her Various Scalpels, The Private Parts of Girls, and Kiss Off, and co-editor of campaigning poetry anthologies, Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot and Binders Full of Women. She lives in London where she teaches Creative Writing, including the Science Fiction MA, at the University of Middlesex. She is the editor of There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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
Issue 29 Jan 2024
Issue 15 Jan 2024
Issue 8 Jan 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: