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So as we look at this, we can expect something like a wound
made of fire opening in the sky around this rotation here.
Already a falling of frogs has begun to fill local lawns

and parking lots in Fredericksburg, clogging gutters
and ditches. And to the southeast of Adams County, the dead
are beginning to walk again. And you see this red blob

to the east of Cleves? We have no idea what that is, but it appears
to be erasing all forms of matter, leaving behind nameless voids,
locals who’ve looked into them report seeing a nothingness of being

that filled them with an unshakeable dread, comparable to
a horrible nightmare from which they can never awake. Now
there’s also talk of angels touching down in the woods and fields

around Elizabethtown, so you’ll want to avoid those areas
where you can, unless you want the wrath of their light
to dry all your fluids and reduce you to a powder made up

of only your most base elements. And while it’s the middle
of the day, a starless blackness like the dark of night has
descended upon the tri-county area here, and the fabric of time

itself has begun to tear and collapse, to the point
that, as I stand before you now, viewers, I’m also
standing again, as a child, in my mother’s kitchen.

She’s alive once more and handing me a plate
of graham crackers and a glass of chocolate milk,
the way she used to every day when I’d come home

from school. Viewers, I don’t know if you can see now
the tears flooding my face as if my eyes were storm clouds.
She’s telling me this is the end. Go not to your houses of worship.

Go instead to those you love who love you most, for if God
is anywhere, He is there. She’s leaving now. In this kitchen
that I never knew was infinite, all color is fading. Mother,

wait. Viewers, there’s a gate she’s walking through
made of smokeless flame and shadowless light. As I look
into it, viewers, for the first time in a long time, I feel

the dissolution of a loneliness that’s lived for years within me.
I must decide now if I will follow. Otherwise, we can expect
a slight chance of showers heading into our weekend,

but by Wednesday, we’re going to see a significant dip
in temperatures, it’ll be a good opportunity to get outside
and get some of that end-of-summer landscaping finished.

If we should come back from this sponsor break,
Chad Lewis will be here to bring you the latest
in sports this week. I’m Jeff Mann with Metro Weather.

Mother, don’t go. I don’t want this painlessness to end.
I can feel my body diffusing into metaphysical residue. Oh,
the beauty I’m becoming now, it’s almost unendurable.



Marcus Whalbring’s third collection (A Concert of Rivers) appeared in 2021 from Milk & Cake Press. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Abyss & Apex, Spry, Pittsburgh Quarterly and others. His fiction is forthcoming from Spaceports & Spidersilk. He earned his MFA from Miami University. He lives in Indiana with his wife and kids.
Current Issue
31 Mar 2025

We are delighted to present to you our second special issue of the year. This one is devoted to ageing and SFF, a theme that is ever-present (including in its absence) in the genre.
Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.
does the comb understand the vocabulary of hair. Or the not-so-close-pixels of desires even unjoined shape up to become a boat
The birds have flown long ago. But the body, the body is like this: it has swallowed the smaller moon and now it wants to keep it.
now, be-barked / I am finally enough
how you gazed on our red land beside me / then how you traveled it, your eyes gone silver
Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how the Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.
In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendlesohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.
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
Issue 27 Jan 2025
By: River
Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Jan 2025
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