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THE DARK TOWER
   “This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.”
   ―William Shakespeare, King Lear

Shadows shift in a dark tower
Where Roland came, boyish and ruddy.
A princess doomed, an empty bower,
Shadows shift in that dark tower.
The fate of kings who’ve lost their power,
In bones and entrails, blind and bloody.
Shadows shift in a dark tower
Where Roland came, boyish and ruddy.

SLEEPING BEAUTY
   “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
   W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Through mandrake groves and tangled vines,
Though thorns and midnight howls …
How silently the moon pines.
Through mandrake groves and tangled vines,
Enchanted love, intoxicating wine.
Briar’s rose and midnight owls,
Through mandrake groves and tangled vines,
Though thorns and midnight howls …

LOVE DRAUGHT
   “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”
   ―William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Beneath a bank where violets grow,
Where fairies dewdrops seek—
Through oxlips and musk-rose, a river flows.
Beside that bank, where violets grow,
A midnight witch, Titania bold. Her lantern glows
Amidst sweet eglantine. Her lover sleeps
Beside that bank where violets grow,
Where fairies dewdrops seek.



Dr. Anna Cates teaches college and graduate level writing, literature, and education online. She has published a variety of books (poetry, fiction, and drama) through www.cyberwit.netprolificpress.com, and wipfandstock.com. She resides in Wilmington, Ohio with her two beautiful kitties.
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
Grannies Against Oppression 
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.
Wednesday: Under the Eye of The Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda 
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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