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It wasn’t me
Ever heard me laugh without a sound?
I am black
Immutable
That couldn’t be my kisser
It was yellow and red
It was any pick from the rainbow

My hand it was, not me
Not my hand, it’s my finger to blame
Well, just a heady mail from
Ovation consulate

In vain I wrestled
To wed its pace and mine
Into this millennial cave
Where heads ebb to dots
And feelings flight fails not
From no distance to another
Feelings flight alternate

I never cried when I laughed
It wasn't me
It was for ceremony
I disown the smile I gave
I never gave

To subtlety was I never tamed
Still less quick I was
To fail to say, to type
How unfunny
Her joke
How shallow
A persiflage

I was redundant anyway
I and my slow strict bends
I was absent and never missed
The fast one was the lenient too

My animus she missed
Amity she snubbed
She was in safe hands no doubt

How it loved her my thumb
Tablet, tap, type, and send
All in the cast except me

If only my lips got a pass
I would have told her a story
Of how emoji smiled at her
It was not me.



Onyendozi Samson Aja is an emerging writer who attempts to see words in everything around him. He is trained to write legal texts, but he always yields to the drive to write poetry. He lives in Nigeria and may be found on Twitter @SamsonAja.
Current Issue
16 Mar 2026

The garden is the resting place of your vulnerabilities; there’s a reason you’ve left them here instead of carrying them with you. Typically you enter hardened and hurried, beelining straight for the correct plot and quickly releasing whatever is clutched in your hand without a second thought—today, an attempted weaving of leather and lace, strength and suppleness that your body cannot figure out how to wear, nor your words to narrate.
If you say there are rats, I will believe you, though I don’t hear or see them.
A ruffling of branches as they resettle for the night. We dare not ask why they are here.
Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
As part of a collective of African writers who have created an Afrocentric Sauútiverse of five planets, two suns and a spirit moon, a world of science and fantasy, where there is no written language, we play with technology and sound magic to scrutinise the world as we know it, and use speculative fiction as a response to our world. 
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Issue 9 Mar 2026
By: Lio Abendan
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Issue 2 Mar 2026
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By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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