Size / / /

Byron, that pouting beast, he could take or leave.  
Wordsworth? He could only pronounce him worried.  
Too often the last part came out warts. And Keats, well,
who survives Keats? Now Coleridge on the other hand—
and though neither quite matched, he did have another—
Coleridge was chewy. At least as long as the poems
had demons, something likely, in them. Still, Shelley seemed
dead on—he had an eye for it, death, for knowing
what chains meant, and fairies, and fire. And the skylark,
so high, cold and far away—though he'd never seen
one—the skylark he knew he would know when he ate one,
slowly, sucking the soft parts clean from the spine.




Bryan D. Dietrich is the author of six books of poems: The MonstranceThe Assumption, Prime DirectiveLove CraftUniversal Monsters, and Krypton Nights. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Asimov's, Weird Tales, Poetry, Ploughshares, and many other journals. Winner of The Paris Review Prize and a Nation Award, Bryan is Professor of English at Newman University. He can be reached at kryptonnights@yahoo.com, and at his website, www.bryandietrich.com.
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11 May 2026

If only Serthe'P had been able to fit in, maybe she could have protected —. No. This thought was dangerous. Mnth’R had helped her understand that their isolation had more to do with the Raja’s exploitation of their cast’s fears than any shortcomings of theirs, his Manifest Sight propaganda curdling climate anxieties into prejudice against community members. Serthe’P needed to remember that their lives mattered too much to be reduced by a tyrant’s ideology. Separated from the cast, they were still finding ways to take care of each other.
Siberia our first home / wild and remote–safe / but Alexei wanted more / theatre–dances–rich men
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2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
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