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In a deciduous maze,
little Lego wakes up
after a millennium
of cowardice.

His timid, minifigure self, constructed to be a toy,
annealed mixture of
bias and xenophobia,
escaped to the dreamland
in a storm, an evolution swept his nation
Malus Domestica.

Wild plastic blossoms
have flourished. Promiscuous
pomes have divided and conquered
every interlocking spaces. Strayed
in a retrograde amnesia, his memory
is coming back as bits and pieces.

"The Genesis is over,
You have no more chances."
With an apple falling on his head
he hears Iðunn's giggle
and turns wide awake

and runs through the barricade
of pedicels and vines, swings his
short arms and forky hands. His spiritus,
combusting, nervous,
antsy respiration kindles
the white LEDs under his feet, when he comes close
to his old home, an antique city built inside
Citrus Sinensis.
At the end of the road
a wide world opens in front of him:

light, pollens, hexagons
anti-gravitating in the air.
Miss Halictida,
are dancing with satin skirts
in the halo of carpenter bees.
"A rule of creative destruction,
he can never learn to embrace."

Sitting by his honey kylix
Osmia Lignaria, The Wise Bee of Alveus,
greatest skald of the Eusocial, sarcastically
depicts in his fiction, 1734,
during the industrial revolution,

and the Pollinator Protest.
"With the conservative belief
he is back to hibernation, in despondence
for another thousand years."




Liu Chengyu came from China nine years ago and is currently living in San Diego. He loves poetry and doing research on proteins. You are welcome to read his previous works in Strange Horizons, Aphelion, Grievous Angel, Silver Blade, and Abyss & Apex.
Current Issue
2 Mar 2026

Strange Horizons
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.”
Issue 23 Feb 2026
Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
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By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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