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Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?
—M.C. Escher

We replicated your experiments
in some elementary school classroom,
made delicate patterns
from circled     & inverted forms.

Now you come to me
a gifted black     & white postcard,
your staircases looping themselves
with     infinite     regularity.

How do_
                    you_
exist?                     draw an object
                    _that
_doesn’t

Pencil me     a space cubby, please,
a time hole where a woman could fit.
I tuck     nothing-fluff in after me,
seal edges & delete evidence of my escape,
roll until     ink jet black     covers all.

You can tessellate my leavings,
should you     find any that matter.

Otherwise,
let     me     be     junk
that flies to outer limits
where a man with (too many) arms
hugs himself, disappears.



Stefani Cox is a poet and writer with an MFA from UC Riverside. Her poetry chapbook, The Stars With You, was published by Cooper Dillon Books in 2022. Stefani’s work has also appeared in The Rumpus, LeVar Burton Reads, and Lost Balloon, among other outlets. Find her on Twitter @stefanicox or her website stefanicox.com.
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 
Issue 16 Feb 2026
Issue 9 Feb 2026
Issue 2 Feb 2026
By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 Jan 2026
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Issue 12 Jan 2026
Issue 5 Jan 2026
Strange Horizons
Issue 22 Dec 2025
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