Size / / /

There is a shadow   world in the pendulum
swing of her arms   when her weathered fingers
release the sand bags

Pocket: 200
the hole is a universe deep
and   she is falling down   fracturing
her bones   like a glass maze   cracking down to
dust   always on the floor

Pocket: 100
the hole is dark   midnight
and a bald stranger in her bed
wipes her tears   says if she waters
her hazelnuts   trees will grow
out of her head

Pocket: 0
she misses the board
her fingers recall
his chest with hair thick like moss the length
of him   she cups the sand bag   just so
smiles knowingly   not remembering
why exactly

Pocket: 500
the hole is light   shining
off the scissors with which   she says
she cut your hair   as you slept
to make you   pay for the curls
she never had

Pocket: 500
the hole is six feet deep
her sister asked   to be buried whole
and not burned to keep   the curls   she mocked her
for and   her husband held her hand   so cold
and he is cold   on the bed
they should loosen   his collar
to let him breathe   to let him breathe
please   let him breathe

Pocket: 500
the hole is an open   mouth
and her tongue throws   words
like sand bags   like wayward spells
at times so precise they make you
forget   yourself   everything




Dominik Parisien is a Franco-Ontarian living in Montreal, Quebec. His poetry has appeared in print and online, in the 2013 Strange Horizons fundraising bonus issue for example, and has been reprinted in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. He is the poetry editor for Postscripts to Darkness, provides editorial support for Cheeky Frawg Books, and is a former editorial assistant for Weird Tales.
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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