Size / / /

Our minds, diodes, electrodes, operate within the cavity

Of metal torsos, sometimes the wiring in shoulders,

Arms, hips, copper and aluminum sternums.

Our skulls: empty shells, for looks,

Humans love on our lips, smiling,

And we plant their gardens:

Chrysanthemums,

Indian-Hawthorns,

Rows of recreated life, breathing entities.

Let us say for instance:

We open our skulls, pull out the emptiness

Where a brain should be,

Fill the dark cavity with thick, slick dirt.

What seed do we plant?

My answer: Eucalyptus Spearmint;

(Good for living and for breathing)

An idea of existential resemblance.

Sprigs of green leaves sprout from our flower-pot-heads.

They ask the well-built gardeners:

What is good for growing?

We say: Things that cannot be ungrown,

Growth that cannot be handmade.

The best of us water flowers,

Sift dirt and pollinate ovaries

With stiff silver fingertips.




Garrett Ashley lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His fiction has appeared in Pank, Lore, and is forthcoming in Asimov's.
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. 
Friday: When Among Crows and To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth 
Issue 9 Mar 2026
By: Lio Abendan
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Issue 2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons
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By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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