QB
Staff of QB
oh, you
thin white plastic
furnished-apartment shower curtain
did you cling
with such fervent tenacity
to your last tenant?
Kat Hausler is a translator and author of the novels What I Know About July and Retrograde, as well as many shorter pieces.
after Ray Bradbury
Either way, if all summer were over in a day, I’d like to think that the drowning skies, the wildflowers, and the golden forest would be the only spring I need, where rain turns this planet into a garden, and Venus blesses me as your goddess.
Kelley Tai is a speculative fiction writer and a 2024 CSFFA Aurora Award-nominated poet.
A very brief canticle on depression by the unconscious mind, possibly speaking to itself in romantic strains
Stay with me, love;
don’t listen to them.
You never looked more beautiful
than in my REM.
Michael T. Smith is an Associate Professor of English who teaches both writing and film courses. He has published roughly 300 pieces (poetry and prose) in over 100 different journals.
At night, when the aquarium is empty, the Giant Pacific Octopus is lonely. There are no people to look for her, no faces to marvel at her. In her loneliness, she makes a wish; to be human, so that she can be among them, even just once.
Something listens; one night, her wish comes true.
Bony limbs unspool, naked eyes squeeze shut against salt’s sting. Jointed fingers fumble at the lock that pliable tentacles would solve easily, until she emerges into the oxygen atmosphere, new lungs heaving. She stands on two wobbling legs, adjusting to this new gravity.
She greets the world in clothes swiped from the gift shop; clashing, bright, oversized. Into the city lights she wanders, where humans gather, where she is nothing to marvel at. It is a joyous experience, this new camouflage.
Outside of a nightclub, lights spill onto the pavement. Music pounds in her singular heart. She moves, compelled, as the music wraps itself around her brain. She dances, gangly limbs flailing wildly. Other humans, drawn by infectious exhilaration, join her. Strangers dance together, laughing, drunk on the joy of living.
Hours later she returns to the aquarium, with warm-blood-flushed cheeks and sweat staining her clothes. The morning sun paints the sky pink, and so paints her back into an octopus. Tentacles open her tank with ease, and she slips contently into her water.
When the people gather to watch her this morning, she dances for them, music thumping in all three of her hearts.
Andrew Loria is an author who dabbles in everything, but prefers the extraterrestrial, the romantic, the horrific, and the absurd.
Time slips.
Quiet.
Soft.
Like it’s trying not to wake the parts of me I keep pretending are asleep.
But if I’m honest—
it’s me.
It’s always been me.
Turning the glass.
Stopping the clock.
Walking away before anything
has the chance to break me.
Maybe the hourglass isn’t a countdown.
Maybe it’s a mirror.
Showing me how often I choose escape
and call it “ending”.
How often I choose silence
and call it “strength.”
Time doesn’t force anything.
It just reveals what I’m running from.
And maybe—just maybe—
it’s time I stopped flipping the glass
and finally let something
reach me.
Tamara Brereton-Karabetsos
When Lem Trapper reached his second set, he found a monster waiting. “Damn you! You humans ruined everything!” it howled.
Lem turned and ran. It chased after, screaming imprecations… right up until it fell into the pit. Then it started kvetching, like they all did.
Arvid Trader ran his fingers through the pelt. “Never seen the like. Some kinda bear?”
“Bigfoot. Talkers. Blame us for the moon fallin’ on the world back when.” Lem grinned. “This’un kept cryin’ 'bout missing ‘the warm.’ Claimed it used to be sunny here year-round.”
Arvid glanced at the thigh-deep Miami perma-snow and scoffed, “Hogwash.”
Floyd Largent
The mist is moving
through the deep piney backwoods
like an army of
gray ghosts, while some strange figure
at the dark heart of
the forest is chopping at
the uncarved block of
human potentia with
Occam’s double-bladed axe.
Jason Ryberg