The Last Borg Finds Meaning, Ed Gaudet
“And so it was sulfurous,
gray-sun vista and gun-metal
sea or what I remember. 

(do I remember?)”

Self Portrait, Kang Yihyun
“I do not know how I came here. It seems I have come back. The airplanes lined up in neat rows are smaller and quieter than they should be.”

House Divided, Itto and Mekiya Outini
“It’s my eighteenth, and the axe is calling. And it’s my brother’s eighteenth, too. I know this even though I’ve never seen him, unless you count those fleeting glimpses over the fence between the yards . . .”

Two Haiku, Stephen O’Connell
“headstone—
the moss visited”

Meanwhile, in the Convent . . . , Simon MacCulloch
“Window-glass is winking in the tower,
Chipping out a twitch of spastic sky.
In the garden rosary bushes flower,
Beady with the days until they die.”

The Space Corn and the Pigeon, Jie Wang
“In the middle of the desert where it used to be New New America, stands a colossal corn—at least its lower part is corn, with its golden grains and green leaves. After it touches the sky, it slowly grows into a metal column.”

Cover art: Beach Aliens, Claire Rye