Size / / /

Yesterday I watched a tiny man climb up my rose bush.

Today I saw a woman dangling from a cloud above my house.

Just now, a cobra slithered under my computer's keyboard,

a miniature transcendental Pope sits cross-legged on my mouse

chanting "om" as flames gnaw at the lino in the kitchen;

my toes crawled off to eat some grass,

my hair ran away with my teeth,

said they had better things to do

like go to the sea. Who knows why?

A fly crawled up my nose and I spat him out,

he said he knew the truth

but couldn't tell me because it was a lie.

My eight-year-old was an alien from Nibiru

searching for Atlantis in the kitchen sink and my

teenager played house with a girl down the road.

My husband's horns have started to curl

and his cheeks have sprouted tusks.

This world is too much to endure.

I slithered on my belly to the front yard

where the ants and millipedes promised

safe transport to a realm of beauty and grace

where all my parts stay where they should.

I fear the insects lied—

this place looks maddeningly familiar

and the woman

dangling from the cloud

looks a lot like me . . .




Sharon lives in Erwin, Tennessee with her husband and daughter. Her poetry has appeared in over a dozen anthologies and magazines, both online and in print, and more of her poetry is slated to appear in other publications throughout 2009 and 2010. You can find out more about Sharon at her website, Inkspot.
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.
Friday: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon 
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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