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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
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
Wednesday: The 2024 Ignyte Award for Best Novel Shortlist, Part Two 
Friday: A Place Between Waking and Forgetting by Eugen Bacon 
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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