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Direct link: January poetry (MP3)

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the January issues.

  • “Scythia" by Marinelle G. Ringer, read by Marinelle G. Ringer. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Marinelle here.
  • “Orthography in the Lands of Yahm" by Daniel Ausema, read by Daniel Ausema. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Daniel here.
  • “Retirement" by Samantha Renda-Dollman, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Samantha here.
  • “Meatspace" by David C. Kopaska-Merkel, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about David here.



Ciro Faienza (pronounced CHEE-roh) is an American/Italian national. He has acted on stages and screens throughout Texas and Massachusetts, and his work as a filmmaker has shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Hub Theater, and the National Gallery, London. His fiction is featured in numerous publications, including Daily Science Fiction and Futuristica, Vol 1. His short story "J'ae's Solution" was a top finalist in PRI's 3-Minute Futures Contest. You can see his visual artwork at his web gallery, Postmedium.
Daniel Ausema is a writer and poet from Colorado. His poetry has previously appeared in Strange Horizons, and his fiction has appeared in many publications. He is also the creator of the steampunk-fantasy serial fiction project Spire City. He has a background in experiential education and is a stay-at-home dad.
David C. Kopaska-Merkel won the 2006 Rhysling Award for a collaboration with Kendall Evans, edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine, and has edited Star*Line and several Rhysling anthologies. His poems have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. A collection, Some Disassembly Required, winner of the 2023 Elgin Award, is available from him at jopnquog@gmail.com.
Julia Rios is a queer, Latinx writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator whose writing has appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Lightspeed, and Goblin Fruit, among other places. Formerly a fiction editor for Strange Horizons, their editing work has won multiple awards, including the Hugo Award. Julia is a co-host of This is Why We're Like This, a podcast about how the movies we watch in childhood shape our lives, for better or for worse. They've narrated stories for Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. Find them on Twitter as @omgjulia.
M. G. Ringer has published poems in The Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Mudfish, The Hudson Review, and Visions International: The World Journal of Illustrated Poetry, among others.  Ringer's fiction has appeared in First Intensity, Phoenix, and The Midland Review.  Non-fiction publications have concerned everything from American English (International Journal of the Humanities) to Ezra Pound's Cantos (Paideuma).  Ringer has been invited to perform poetry at a number of venues—including the Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village, New York City, and AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island—as well as deliver scholarly findings at several symposia of the Jack London Society, the American and Popular Culture Associations, the Second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, and the Oxford Round Table.
Samantha Renda-Dollman lives in South Africa with her husband, two rabbits and two cats. When not writing poetry or shopping for euro boardgames, she's usually doing something entomological. Or watching crusty old sci-fi movies.
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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