Size / / /

Content warning:


they said the West was not for us
they said, go back
to your damp and your fog
and your cold, gray despair
the West is for desperados and bleached bones,
for hawk-eyed hunters of solace,
for cattle, staid peace-keeping gods
of the decades of dry winds that whisper once
into the heart of the agave, “bloom, bloom”
for the sun that still rises and the
dead that stay dead

but, we asked, do we not rise also?
do we not bloom after lying in wait,
forgotten for so many years?
are we not the pioneer seeking
and the cowboy outlasting
and the herd stampeding
and the old bones wasting?
if the West is for life and death and the brave who walk between,
then the West is for us,
we who shake off our fates
to grasp again
at life



Blaize Kelly Strothers is a writer, artist, and science fiction enthusiast from Inwood, Manhattan. Her poetry and artwork have appeared or are forthcoming in Apparition Literary MagazineScifaikuest, and Star*Line and can be found at blaizestrothers.com.
Current Issue
4 Nov 2024

“Did you know,” the witch says, “that a witch has no heart of her own?”
Outsiders, Off-worlders {how quickly one carves out a corner of the cosmos, / claims a singular celestial body as [o u r s] in the scope of infinity}
Lunar enby folks across here
  In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas' 'Embroidery of a Bird's Heart' read by L.W. Salinas.  Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: ⁠⁠Spotify
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
Load More