Size / / /

It means the headwaters of mass,

the treacly origins of inertia,
have been discovered. It explains

why rocks stubbornly refute
the argument of my toes; why galaxies
clump like moths around a dark flame;

how a whale floats in the sea dreamy
as a balloon, yet a small oyster
of a child clings heavy as a millstone.
Maybe it even explains why tragedy,

a metal and plastic bolide, hurtles
unstoppable through red lights;
how grief presses down on lungs
to squeeze out the last sweet breath;
why a black hole of absence hangs so heavy.

It has cost billions to build
god-sized synchrotrons aswim
with sticky-fingered particles,
and thousands of papers covered in black
specks of data like locusts
swarming on error-bar wings

to confirm what every family knows.




C. W. Johnson's poems have appeared in Asimov's, Stone Telling, Goblin Fruit, Star*Line, and non-genre magazines. His 2012 poem "Vigor Mortis" was nominated for a Rhysling Award. Johnson's fiction has been published in Analog, Asimov's, Interzone, The Other Half of the Sky, and elsewhere. He is a professor of physics specializing in theoretical nuclear physics, and his research articles appear in Physical Review C and elsewhere.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
Issue 18 Mar 2024
Strange Horizons
Issue 11 Mar 2024
Issue 4 Mar 2024
Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
Issue 5 Feb 2024
Issue 29 Jan 2024
Issue 15 Jan 2024
Issue 8 Jan 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: