Size / / /

The majestic blooming

of the century plant

reveals petals of pure yellow

and stained cream,

distinct pistils and stamens.

I will love you, she said,

like Freud loved the id

in its trammeled fury.

The jaws of my brain,

adrift in opaque bestiality,

question the integrity

of a Pythagorean

reclining nude.

The heel stamp of my pen

assassinates the art

of nuclear mystics.

I will love you, she said,

like Darwin loved evolution.

Things change.

In an algid moment

the final consequences

of the abominable resonance

of a soft and hairy

architecture are revealed.

Diacritical exclamations!

The ravishing comprehension

of cannibal imperialism

by a paranoid critic.

I will eat you like the peach

I eat every Sunday, she said,

in the sky black morn.

Having teased

the sensitive mimosa

in the circular greenhouse

late that afternoon,

afterward,

he would drink peppermint tea

with the ghost of morning.




Bruce Boston is the author of forty-seven books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read more about him at www.bruceboston.com and see some of his previous work in our archives.
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Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Once I’ve finished writing, I will fold this letter up and tuck it into the Tristram you kindly loaned me (may it be our Galeotto … ). I’ll knock on your door, at which point I will most likely encounter a puzzled maidservant, who will ask who in the world I am, and I will explain that I am returning a book you were kind enough to bestow on me (generous creature that you are and clearly down-on-their-luck weatherworn would-be poet that I am).
the trees were softening, their bark for the hungry to scrape and scrape and spread it on whatever bread they could beg or bake
i must warn you before all else / before you poke and prod
Paul Kincaid and Dawn Macdonald join Dan Hartland to discuss style.
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
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Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
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