Size / / /

Content warning:


You do not mean this
as slang. Time, literally, stops
by your house, fucks your mom.
It’s not non-consensual, she
too is hungry to move below Time.
And she is open to alternatives.
You hear them all night,
their wails gag the walls,
the floorboards, the ceramic
of your bones. She has thrown
away her cloak and alarm clocks.
She measures dawn by absence
of desire, moon by rage
or sorrow. She does not measure
anything else—asafoetida for curry,
salt for meat, your fluctuating weight,
the distance between conception
and creation, banks and beggars,
thirst and pissing, how many islands
compose New Zealand—600
or 2, depends on how alone
you feel. Time, you hear her
murmur over the phone, offers
the most pussyblowing cunnilingus.
Time’s tongue knows tongues no man
has patience to learn. Do not mistake
any of this for metaphor.
She examines her hands all
evening, concludes one is larger
than the other. Symmetry is a myth,
like beauty, like DNA, like time
zones divorcing countries that waste
men on war. A waterfall
of bullets is the melody Time
whets its teeth with. You hate to end
a sentence like that. There is so
much time to think—think!
Everything will be over
by the time you walk
into her room, the orchestra
of their bodies having received
its applause, Time bowing down,
and your mom trying
to remember where she is
in her cycle.



Karan Kapoor is the Editor-in-Chief of ONLY POEMS. A finalist for the Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems appear or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, and elsewhere, fiction in Joyland Magazine and the other side of hope, and translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They’re on the editorial board of Alice James Books.
Current Issue
14 Apr 2025

back-legg-ed, puppy shaped and squirmy
the pastor is a woman / with small birds living in the hollows of her eyes.
Strange Horizons
On June 4th, we will be opening for speculative fiction novelette submissions between the word count of 10,000 and 18,000 words. We will cap submissions at 300.
Strange Horizons
On November 3rd, we will be opening for speculative fiction stories written by Indigenous authors. We will be capping submissions at 500.
The formula for how to end the world got published the same day I married the girl who used to bully me in middle school. We found out about it the morning after, on the first day of our honeymoon in Cozumel. I got out of the shower in our small bungalow and Minju was sitting in bed, staring at her laptop.
In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Charlie Jane Anders about her Strange Horizons publications dating all the way back to 2002, charting her journey as a writer and her experience with the magazine over 20 years, as well as her love for community events and bringing people together.
Issue 7 Apr 2025
By: Lowry Poletti
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 31 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Mar 2025
Issue 17 Mar 2025
Issue 10 Mar 2025
By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 3 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Feb 2025
Issue 17 Feb 2025
Issue 10 Feb 2025
By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 27 Jan 2025
By: River
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