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Direct link: April poetry (MP3)

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the April issues.

  • “Minions" by Bryan Thao Worra, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Bryan Thao here.
  • “Eating Verse" by Akua Lezli Hope, read by Romie Stott. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Akua Lezli here.
  • “Propagation" by Layla Al-Bedawi, read by Romie Stott. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Layla here.
  • “Neither/Nor" by Alleliah Nuguid, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Alleliah here.



Akua Lezli Hope, wisdom seeker and paraplegic creator of poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, and adornments, has been in print since 1974. Her collections include Embouchure (Writer’s Digest Book Award) and Otherwheres (Elgin Award). A Cave Canem fellow, her honors include NEA and NYFA fellowships, as well as SFPA, Rhysling, and IGNYTE awards. Her collection Telepath appears April 2026 from Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
Alleliah Nuguid is from Fremont, California.  She is currently an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Boston University. Her poems can be found in Permafrost, The New York Times Learning Blog, Poets 11, and, anonymously, in an unauthorized biography of a 2011 San Francisco mayoral candidate.
Anaea Lay lives in Chicago, Illinois where she writes, cooks, plays board games, reads too much, and questions the benevolence of the universe. Her work has appeared in many places including Apex, Penumbra, Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and Nightmare. She lives online at anaealay.com.
An award-winning Laotian American writer, Bryan Thao Worra holds a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a professional member of the Horror Writer Association and the Science Fiction Poetry Association. In 2012 he was a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the London Summer Games. His work has been featured internationally, including the Smithsonian traveling exhibit "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story," the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Parnassus during the 2012 London Summer Games.
Layla Al-Bedawi is a poet, writer, and bookbinder (among other things). English is her third language, but she's been dreaming in it for years. Born in Germany to Kurdish and Ukrainian parents, she currently lives in Houston, TX, where she co-founded Fuente Collective and champions experimentation, collaboration, and hybridity in writing an other arts. Her work is published in Liminal Stories, Mithila Review, Bayou Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her at laylaalbedawi.com and @frauleinlayla.
Romie Stott is the administrative editor and a poetry editor of Strange Horizons. Her poems have appeared in inkscrawl, Dreams & Nightmares, Polu Texni, On Spec, The Deadlands, and Liminality, but she is better known for her essays in The Toast and Atlas Obscura, and a microfiction project called postorbital. As a filmmaker, she has been a guest artist of the National Gallery (London), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), and the Dallas Museum of Art. You can find her fairly complete bibliography here.
Current Issue
9 Feb 2026

“I’ve never actually visited the pā before,” she said out loud. “Is this where they gather lāʻī to make the pūʻolo?” she asked. “Yes,” Benny responded, glancing to see where Nanea was pointing. “Here and in other places as well. Many of these ti have been growing for decades now.” She paused for a moment. “I think about all the work you guys do, you know, up in those offices, and I think that all of that work actually starts from right here, in the ground, all covered in the earth and the pōhaku and the ti. Most people don’t even know it, but it all starts right here.
sometime in the night, we heard rocking and knocking and rapping and tapping, a million trillion tiny feet
The triangles bred and twisted, replicating themselves.
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