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It begins with a shudder,
a small tremblor.
Then a slippage of faith.
Nothing big, you understand.
A disaster in the small.

Ace shivers, slides,
Jack’s knees give out,
A trio of deuces fail to thrive.
The Queen’s sceptre wavers.
The fall begins.

It becomes Biblical in moments,
deck dissolving, devolving
into a puddle of argument.
Who makes the first leap
will never be known.

But the cards abandon
the Ship of State,
fall into an ocean of regret.
We will find their skeletons
in the hereafter.

Priests and pundits
will pick over their bones.



Jane Yolen writes poetry for both children and adults. She is a past winner of the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling award for a short poem, Dwarf Star Award for poems under ten lines, as well as being named by the Association as a Grand Master of science fiction and fantasy poetry. She is a frequent poetry contributor to such genre magazines as Asimov’s, Mythic Delirium, and Goblin Fruit. She has over 370 books published, a huge number of them poetry. Her books have won the Caldecott, the Christopher Medal, the Jewish Book Award, and two of her stories were Nebula winners. Three of her books won the Mythopoeic Award. Last year, she was named a winner of the New England Public Radio’s Arts and Humanities Award. And her Skylark Award set her good coat on fire.
Current Issue
31 Dec 2024

Of Water, Always Seeking 
remember, you are not alone, / and you have fury / as well as faith
The Egg 
By: River
faded computations / erased by the light of blood moons and / chalk
In the Zoo 
crocodile, crocodile, may we cross your river?
The Quantum and Temporal Properties of Unresolved Love 
Strange Horizons
Dante Amoretti, PhD, PE, Fellow, IEEE, Fellow, IET, IEEE-HKN   Abstract—This study explores the temporal and quantum properties of Unresolved Love (UL), drawing parallels with the resublimated thiotimoline discovered by Asimov in 1948. Much like thiotimoline, UL exhibits temporally irregular behavior, decaying not only in the present but also extending into both the past and future. This paper utilizes the concept of affectrons (i.e., love quantum particles emitted by the cardiac muscle), which directly influence the Cardial Love Density (CLD), the measurable amount of love per unit of volume within the heart. By tracking the concentration of affectrons over time,
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By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
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Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
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