New poem from me today, up at Kaleidotrope – Awakening – another take on the Sleeping Beauty story, with a slight twist that I won’t spoil.
Free to read – though it might be worth tipping the publisher, or joining that Patreon.
Enjoy!
So this month started off with the publication of my latest poem, Ah yes, the Trick, which appeared in Interstellar Flight Magazine as part of a poetry conversation, with poets responding to previous poems in the series. It was a lot of fun to do – and although Medium informs me that, alas, not all that many people have checked it out yet, I’ll keep hoping that a few more people wander by and read the entire conversation.
And then came the other big announcement: my poem Care for Lightning, which initially appeared in Uncanny Magazine back in January 2025, is one of the six inaugural finalists for the Nebula Award for Poetry – my first ever Nebula Award recognition. I’m thrilled that the poem has resonated with so many people.
First, Interstellar Flight Magazine has published an unusually personal essay from me about structured poetry and medical testing, free to read here.
And second, Small Wonders has published a new poem from me, Straw Gold, also free to read – with the option of buying the entire issue for just $3.
Enjoy!
My first publication of the year is out – “Let It Breathe,” in issue 2 of Solarpunk Magazine. It’s behind a paywall, but you can buy the entire issue for just $6 – and maybe pick up an orca T-shirt along the way.
“Let It Breathe” is pure science fiction.
Enjoy!
Auugh. I hate doing these. I really, truly, hate doing these. But hey, it also seems to be part of the job, and it’s certainly now a tradition, so, here we go:
Short fiction:
“Waiting for Clear Waters,” in Achilles: New & Ancient Greek Tales, Flame Tree Press, April 2025, an environmental retelling of the great fight between Achilles and the river.
Slightly shameful confession here: I was and am mostly excited about this story because of how lovely the book is. Alas, despite that, this book appears to have mostly flown under the radar this year.
“Without Sunsets or Snow,” in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, July 2025.
A very short story about memories, death, and computers, it marked my return to Three–Lobed Burning Eye after a very long absence, and got some very kind feedback from readers.
“Ino’s Hideaway,” in The Sunday Morning Transport, September 2025.
I despaired of ever publishing this one because of all of the marine biology jokes – but I also couldn’t bear to take any of them out. Fortunately, the editors at The Sunday Morning Transport were also amused.
Poetry
“Care for Lightning,” in Uncanny Magazine, January 2025
The fabulously incorrect AI summary that Microsoft Copilot invented for this poem claims that it is about beauty and lightning storms. It is not. But it was probably the most popular thing I wrote last year.
“Adjustments and Loss,” in Utopia Science Fiction, June 2025
I have a tiny – just tiny – obsession with structured poetry – thus this triolet. It’s behind a paywall, but if I may be permitted a slightly biased comment, I think the issue, which includes several other stories and poems, is worth the five dollars.
“Princess and Crows,” in Worlds of Possibility, June 2025, and also Worlds of Possibility – Poetry, August 2025.
It’s rare that I get anything reprinted this quickly, but Julia Rios decided to put together a special, poetry issue to celebrate the new Hugo Award for Best Poem. That anthology, by the way, includes poems written by other Hugo finalists for Best Poem – so if you want to get a sense of our work, this is probably a good place to start.
When All I Could See Were Flowers, in Kaleidotrope, July 2025
To be honest, I thought this was going to end up being another overlooked poem – and then, when I linked to it for Marie Brennan’s 12DaysOfPoetry project, something about that post tweaked the Bluesky algorithm – turning this into one of my most read poems of the year.
It Will Happen, Patreon/Medium, October 2025
One of a few poems that I published on Patreon this year – but the only one that is both genre and not behind a paywall. If you missed it earlier, I hope you’ll read it now, without any obligation to join my Patreon or follow me on Medium.
Nonfiction – Best Related Work
Portrayals of Disability in the Wheel of Time, Sony Pictures/Amazon Studios, Uncanny Magazine, November 2025
I probably should have reworked the title of this one, since although yes, it’s certainly about how disability is portrayed in The Wheel of Time, and my reactions to those portrayals, it’s also about portrayals of disability in genre television in general, and how The Wheel of Time works with and against those past portrayals.
(deep sigh of relief. ok I never have to ….wait, what’s that? I have forthcoming poetry and fiction in 2026 so I will have to do this again in late 2026/early 2027? auugh)
See you in 2026 and 2027!
Over on Bluesky, Marie Brennan has been having fun with a delightful 12DaysOfPoetry, where poets have been posting links to various poems – and even writing a few for the occasion.
A couple of days in, I knew EXACTLY what I wanted to do for the seventh day – aka, swan day, if we are going with the song. (Which we probably shouldn’t be doing, since the seventh day of Christmas is New Year’s Eve, not Swan Day, but I digress.) Because back in the day – way back in the day at this point, I had written not one, not two, not three, but seven – SEVEN – sestinas about swans.
Could not be more perfect, I thought.
And immediately slammed into a couple of wrenches.
The first, and worst, was that although one of these sestinas (“Silk”) was printed and reprinted in a number of venues, frequently without permission, but I digress, and the others had appeared on my now extremely defunct website way, way, way back in the day, only one of the seven (“Stars”) was easily accessible in a digital format now. Extensive digital searches and a hunt through my journals found six of the seven. I have hopes that the seventh is still around in an external hard drive or notebook somewhere, but as of today, it’s lost.
I then had to do some massive reformatting for two of them (“Silk,” surprisingly, and “Shadow,”) and do some deep thinking about whether or not I really wanted one of them back in the world (“Silver”). And then finally I started putting them up on Medium – only to discover, two poems in, that Medium would not let me post more than two articles in a 24 hour period. This certainly makes sense for Medium, and is ordinarily not an issue for me, but also meant that my plan to put each sestina on a separate page was not going well.
Which brings us to this page, where I’ve gathered the six remaining sestinas, in no particular order, below the cut:
Continue readingJust popping in here with two quick notes:
First, Reckoning has republished my poem, “Green Leaves Against the Wind,” in their special neurodiversity reprints issue, A Chorus: Divergent.
And second, the Sundress blog spent last week publishing excerpts from my 2024 chapbook, A Few Mythic Paths – which, not incidentally, is still available from the publisher, Porkbelly Press, a small press focused on getting more poetry and beauty into the world – something, I think, of significant value in these times. I’m glad to see more excerpts from the chapbook slowly make their way into the world.
And here, fall has finally arrived, and the red maples are slowly – slowly – starting to burst into one last celebration of color and flame. One of my favorite seasons in central Florida.
Florida has a long history of mermaids – explorers telling tales of spotting their colorful fins and shell-decked hair in foaming waves; tourists telling tales of the (very real) mermaids doing synchronized swimming in the clear waters of various Florida springs. (If you get a chance to see this, it’s amazingly awful and thus highly recommended.) And I have a considerably shorter history of exploring various parts of southwest Florida – the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the great bald cypress trees and wetlands of the Everglades, the piles of seashells before and after storms.
This all came together for my latest story, Ino’s Hideaway, now available to read at The Sunday Morning Transport. Enjoy!
A new story from me, Without Sunsets or Snow, up at Three-Lobed Burning Eye today.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the relationships between computers and humans, data storage and memory. Sometimes this ends up in a story indirectly. Sometimes directly, as here.
Enjoy!
It’s raining right now, which seems like a good time to tell you about a couple of new poems from me:
First, a triolet, “Adjustments and Loss,” which appeared in the June 2025 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. You do need to pay for the issue to read it – but that pay goes to support other writers and poets, and grants you access to other stories and poems AND and interview with Bogi Takács.
Triolets – short poems with repeating lines – are a mini obsession of mine; I’ve found myself working on a number of them this year. We’ll see if any more end up getting published.
Second, When All I Could See Were Flowers, free to read at Kaleidotrope. This longer poem was loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, another fairy tale I return to now and again.
Enjoy!
Blogging with dragons 