A Girl Who Comes Out of a Chamber at Regular Intervals, by Sofia Samatar
These automata are but vessels for our dreams; the wine they hold is the shadow of the future. –Safiyya bint al-Jazari 1. On the construction of clocks from which … Continue reading
Elephants and Omnibuses, by Julia August
Excerpted from A Popular History of Roman War-Machines (Oxford, 1879) Preface We are accustomed to hearing the Roman army described as a “well-oiled machine.” Of what parts, the interested reader … Continue reading
On Being Undone by a Light Breeze, by Vajra Chandrasekera
Inside your house you can cry and have babies and dinners with the food laid out in so many dishes, in a bubble of clean oxygen where the entropy of … Continue reading
Rowena, by Sean Moreland
When I was a small child, my father gave me a beautiful bird, with bright jade feathers, an ember-orange beak. I adored the bird, kept its gilded cage beside my … Continue reading
Their Dead So Near, by Kate Heartfield
Deep under the hot grass, the panting dogs, the flower beds, the grasping willows, the bottle caps and condoms, the grit, rubble and pipes, the starveling city earthworms, under the … Continue reading
Mon pays c’est l’hiver, by Amal El-Mohtar
In a land of noon-darkness and damp, of mornings that sway between syrup-bright and pigeon-grey and evenings of thick velvet, a traveller feels a tug at the hook in her … Continue reading
An Orange Tree Framed Your Body, by Alex Dally MacFarlane
the boy and the road talk youth I’m sitting on the side of a dusty road, thinking of oranges. Thinking of my father and of death—his and mine. The Emperor’s … Continue reading
Death and the Girl from Pi Delta Zeta, by Helen Marshall
Carissa first sees Death at the Panhellenic Graffiti mixer where he is circled by the guys from Sigma Rho. They can’t seem to help crowding him even though they clearly … Continue reading
Balloons, by Christine Miscione
At twenty-two years, Callie’s cysts ate her ovaries, and twisted tubes into malignant spiral staircases. The staircases led to nowhere. They broke apart in places, too dangerous, a looming safety … Continue reading
A City on Its Tentacles, by R.B. Lemberg
Luba bent over her daughter’s bed, under the apartment’s single window. The setting sun wove Maya’s sleeping face into the shadows. Her little fingers, listless upon the faded blanket, reminded … Continue reading
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