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You know this world well: green rows heavy
with August heat and humidity, ears bent,

silk brushing the ground, or shredded brown stalks
dry with shrunken kernels scavenged in late fall

by wild turkey or herds of white-tailed deer.
You never shy away from the sudden shapes that appear

shorn in the fields, waves of stalks woven into circles
and split spheres. Even now, when farmers frown,

as a V of geese veers away, you listen to the humming,
a low drone that buzzes like insects that cling to the light.

Your fingers tingle, your shoulders ache, you feel
a strange pulse in the veins behind your ears. You toss

your shoes to the wind, throw yourself into cartwheels,
one turn after another and another and another.

Hard ground tears at the palms of your hands,
bites the bottom of your feet every time you land.

Above you, a single crow caws a shrill warning,
a hunting beagle suddenly bays a half a mile away.

But you keep turning. You know the twisted stalks
will teach you how to bend without breaking.




Karen J. Weyant's speculative poetry has been published in Arsenic Lobster, Caesura, Cold Mountain Review, The Devilfish Review, Strange Horizons, and Whiskey Island. When she is not writing, she enjoys exploring the speculative regions of the Rust Belt.
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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