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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
12 May 2025

You saw her for the first time at your front door, like she wanted to sell you something or convert you. She had light hair and dark eyes, and she was wearing fatigues, which was the only way you knew that your panicked prayers of the last few minutes had not come true. “Don’t freak out,” she said. “I’m you. From—uh, let’s just say from the future. Can I come inside?”
Time will not return to you as it was.
The verdant hills they whispered of this man so apt to sin / chimney smoke was pure as mountain snow compared to him.
In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Naomi Kritzer about her non-linear writing journey, imagining positive futures, and how to deal with the world catching up to your near-future specfic.
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