Realize. It may take time to find a starfish on Omnalik Beach. You’ve seen the holos of that halfway land between Mare Estrellas and the Unyielding Void, but they do not do justice to the glittering diamond dust of the shore, or capture the dullness of the creatures’ outer cover. They are living blind spots; … Continue reading So You Want to Eat an Omnalik Starfish by Brian Hugenbruch
I got the message that you are dead, and on your way out to me. I know. You wanted it to be a surprise. But Marcie continues to send me regular updates about everything you say and do. Or by now, I guess, everything you said and did. Marcie is, well, Marcie. I admit, even … Continue reading The Dust That Falls Between the Light by Mari Ness
I once visited a home where brambles had grown so high that they drank all the light before it even touched the walls. I’d left my keys out front, in the van full of dry ice and slabs of meat with its slow-growing retinue of flies. When I knocked, the door fell open instantly, like … Continue reading Upon What Soil They Fed by Jennifer Mace
They say the fires won’t reach us, that the roll of desert has been burned so bad for so long that there’s nothing left on which they could travel. The ground is beyond dust. What’s left is something powder-thin that we breathe in and breathe in, and hear grinding the motors of our salvaged cars, … Continue reading The Fires by Jessie Ulmer
Two nights ago, I heard a radio station play your alien song wrapped in static and enigma. It was of course a dream; no one’s heard a radio in many years. I imagined the haunting melody as I lay beside the river bridge in the valley where I left my father’s body many years ago. … Continue reading When You Sang Back to Us by Chloie Piveral
Last night, I dreamt of the spacemen in Fiddler’s Green. I heard them floating outside my house—their suits creaking like branches in the wind, visors tapping against my windowpane—lost forever in the darkness of space. I imagine their bodies, frozen in near zero, or else planted on some distant planet, destined to form part of … Continue reading An Elegy for May in the Forest of the Noble Spacemen by Dafydd McKimm
It moves across your skin as though alive. The pelts, stitched neatly together as a single taut piece of elaborate fabric, squeezing, constricting, tighter, breathing vibrant gentle and alive. You flex under it, feel it flex back. One hundred percent organic and costs it. Admire how it clings to every curve. You move to ease … Continue reading Fashion by Genelle Chaconas
Just after eleven on a velvet June night, the moon rolls like a pearl dropped from the sky. You and I hurry along Sycamore Street as it kisses down into the dark cornfields, the same place it chooses every month. Then we run, giggling. When you grab my hand, my heart skips a double-dutch rhythm. … Continue reading Lights That Shine by Aimee Ogden
The first time I found the hidden market, it felt like this— —an April morning, capricious sun flitting in and out of cloud, rain riding the breeze but I’ve no umbrella, of course; a sudden darkening of the sky and a quickening of the rain and it’s under my collar and obscuring my glasses and … Continue reading The Hidden Market by Lucy Harlow
i When the girl is nine a witch called Anna wrecks her sister, spells her into a swan and binds her in a cave. Charms stalactites to grow above her, dripping minerals into her gullet while she flaps and screams. Avian lives are short and transformation requires space, so the human sister turns her volume … Continue reading How She Lost Her Voice by Mary Scott