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we never learned your given name
but did you still get married
the day after your dad lost
forty thousand smackers
to poor unlucky Marion

he wanted to buy his baby girl
a lavish wedding present
but marriage-coveting Marion
split with the cash
and the rest is grisly history

did your father still end up
buying you that house
daughter whose nuptials
inadvertently touched off
all this mayhem

Marion Crane lost everything
what did you lose
a sense of the world’s innocence
a pure white wedding day
unblemished by blood

did you think of how
your father’s moola
sped her way to death
appalled cello half-notes
descending like Marion
sliding down the wall
slipping out of life
eyes going out

how your dad flashed his green
until she couldn’t resist
becoming a blonde in a car
driving towards her black
and white demise



Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of a novel (Can't Find My Way Home) and two collections (Sinking, Singing and People Change), all published by Aqueduct Press. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Fantasy, Uncanny, Escape Pod, and Worlds of Possibility. For more about her work, visit http://gwynnegarfinkle.com.
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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.”
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Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
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By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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