Size / / /

She nails it to the wall.
This will bring him back.
This will guide his mind.

She sees him in the open.
He holds a compass skyward,
turning in all directions.

The clouds confuse him.
They keep his eyes half-closed.
In daytime he stops to sleep.

She sends a herd of horses
stampeding across the sky,
to pull the covering from his bed.

She animates the grass at his feet
to slither against his heels.
He leaps from his stupor.

She denudes the galaxy,
filling one star to the brim:
the flames, the sparks, the spirits

This one light goes to him,
her old dresses are burned for him,
of the well-fed girl that she was.

Look up tonight, she pleads.
Wherever you are, look up.
His silence to her is weakness.

She pulls the wheel from her wall.
She plucks a spoke and thinks,
One less road for him to take.

She doesn't know that he walks
on empty, unmarked highways,
across fields filling with snow.

 

Copyright © 2004 Andrew Grossman

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Andrew Grossman began the poetry database at www.poeticcopy.com to realize his goal of using poetry to communicate understanding, peace, and caring among people of different religious, cultural, and lifestyle beliefs. The unity between humanity and nature is for him the template for creating unity among all humanity. He lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with his wife, Nancy Terrell. To contact him, email andrew@poeticcopy.com.



Bio to come.
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.
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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.
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Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
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