Size / / /

Content warning:


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
21 Apr 2025

tomorrow when i have hardened, and your body has renewed.
A recent wave of research into the quantum properties of emotion suggests that love may be more than a fleeting human experience
Every spring, the new year came down from the mountains to eat the old one.
Friday: This Cursed House by Del Sandeen 
Issue 14 Apr 2025
Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons
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
Load More