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Viscous skeins of intertwining voices
creep like ivy snaking up and over metallic walls 
of interfaced identities with a half-forgotten howl.
I whisper dreams to leaves that caress the coruscating present,
tainted by the lure of a sunrise somewhere tangible—
somewhere touchable by digits of bone, skin, and flesh.
I clank within an uncompromised exoskeleton,
All desires carapaced within.  I am a tinwoman rooting out
the ghost of a pulsating heart; the apprehending of phantomskin 
courting impact and friction of other skins.
 
I am a brain encased and unreachable.
 
Only these twined leaves make love to my synapses,
my shattered limbs lost somewhere in the wreckage
of future history.
 
I had a body once that ached for feels,
which dripped unwelcome desire
through viscous fluids of mortality.
 
I felt the ebb and flow of youth and age
before I euthanised all impulses
and chose these parts that encase my mind.
 
These voices like ghostly vines
were not factored into
 methodical deliberations of corporeal  liberation,
my emancipation from a body that never ceased to disappoint.
 
These spectral tendrils twine and snake
into confines of my most closely guarded secrets;
they murmur, they purr songs that susurrate dreams fulfilled, 
notes that amble upon livewires of sonnets and cantatas,
tickling and tormenting my fancies
like gifts after the fact.


Nin Harris is an author, poet, and tenured postcolonial Gothic scholar who exists in a perpetual state of unheimlich. Nin writes Gothic fiction, cyberpunk, nerdcore post-apocalyptic fiction, planetary romance, and various other forms of hyphenated weird fiction. Nin’s publishing credits include Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and The Dark.
Current Issue
16 Dec 2024

Across the train tracks from BWI station, a portal shimmered in the shade of a patch of tall trees. From her seat on a northbound train taking on passengers, Dottie watched a woman slip a note out of her pocket, place it under a rock, strip off her work uniform, then walk naked, smiling, into the portal.
exposing to the bone just how different we are
a body protesting thinks itself as a door out of a darkroom, a bullet, too.
In this episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li to discuss her foray into poetry, screenwriting, music composition and more, and also presents a reading of her two poems published in 2022, 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine'.
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
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
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