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The man in the wine shop gives me half a glass
of sweet French red, tells me it's been popular
at weddings. He blithely calls it port, but I can't
help but think: It's madeira in a stained pink dress.
I carry one slim bottle beneath my arm just as far
as the spirits section at the back. I confess
it's a share of Guyana rum that I'm really after.
Fifteen-year aged in an oak cask is the stuff
on which my dreams are made and broken,
unless you count the time, five vodka shots
and several tons of knife-edged heartbreak later,
I locked myself in Brian and Jody's loo and shouted
at an imaginary dead boy for half an hour. It's true
that I'm built for heartbreak, and so I raise
this toast to friends loved, lost, and about
to be lost. Death has always wanted me closer
than those she steals from my arms. It's you
that I can never hope to save, and so I'll tell
this story before I forget: as a child, I drowned
off North Carolina. I remember the crush of water
in my lungs and the vicious sting of salt
all the sun-shot way down. I remember the calm
that stole over me less than half a minute before
I hit the sand and choked up her gifts to me, grief
before glory. You're the ferryman now, she said.

And, fool that I am, I believed it.




AJ's first full-length poetry collection, The Sting of It, was published by Tolsun Books in 2019 and won Best LGBT Book in the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards.  Their first novel, The Pursued and the Pursuing, was published by DartFrog Blue in 2021 and won 2nd place in the Adult Historical Fiction category of the Reads Rainbow Awards.  AJ holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and is a full-time English Faculty member at San Juan College.  AJ has been on staff at Strange Horizons since 2012.  You can find them on Twitter and visit their website.
Current Issue
28 Oct 2024

By: Anna Martino
Translated by: Anna Martino
The truth is that I don’t know how much of my life was a dream and how much was reality. Does it matter in the end?
(...) A verdade é que não sei o quanto de minha vida foi sonho e quanto foi realidade. Faz diferença, no fim das contas?
By: Bindu Tiji
Translated by: Lakshmy Nair
Now, my passion is only for deserts.
എനിക്കിനി  ആസക്തി മരുഭൂമികളോടാണ്
By: Nanpai Sanshu
Translated by: Xueting C. Ni
PX9345 is a solar system situated on the outer edge of the Milky Way. It has one star, seventeen planets, three of which are located in a habitable zone, where water is not only present, but present in large amounts.
px9345是一个处于银河系边缘的星系,它有一颗恒星,十七颗行星,其中有三颗都处在宜居带上,不仅有水,而且是大量的水。
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 30 Sep 2024
Issue 23 Sep 2024
By: LeeAnn Perry
Art by: nino
Issue 16 Sep 2024
Issue 9 Sep 2024
Issue 2 Sep 2024
Issue 26 Aug 2024
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