Category: poetry

a dandelion and in the background wild flowers and a forest

Eye to the Telescope, Issue #56: A Garden of an Issue

Eva

This year, I was delighted to edit the 2025 Spring Issue 56 for Eye to the Telescope on the theme of Plants.

For those who don’t know, Eye to the Telescope is an SFPA journal that publishes one issue per season with guest editors.

I had a wonderful time reading through the poems, long and short, and all the imaginative ways the poets interpreted the theme. I got 256 submissions and I wish I could accept more than the twenty poems that appear in the issue.

Go read the issue and enjoy the blooming poetry in it!

 

And here is my editor’s note:

From centenarian trees to small flowers blooming through cracks in the concrete, plants have shown that life is as simple and complicated as putting down roots and absorbing the sun.

Plants have been fighting storms and blizzards, heatwaves and droughts for millions of years. Today, with climate change, the expansion of urban landscape, the wildfires and the unregulated deforestation, being resilient sometimes seems to be all a plant can do.

In some ways, words are like plants.

Tenacious. Defiant. Even when cut down, uprooted, stepped on, erased, their seeds still fall on the ground, their pollen travels with the wind. Eventually, they sprout and grow into poems all over again.

In this garden of an issue of Eye to the Telescope, the twenty poems blooming from the underworld to outer space and everywhere in between will take us into a journey about memory, adaptability, change and hope.

I would like to thank everyone who submitted and trusted me with their work. It has been a pleasure to edit this issue and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

—Eva Papasoulioti

A leafless tree against the blue sky

Rhysling Eligibility Post

Eva

I’m very late to the party, but since the nominations for the poetry Rhyslings awards end tomorrow, here are my eligible poems:

“Worlds Apart” appeared in Star*Line.

“First rule of time travel”, about losing yourself in wormholes, in Star*Line.

“Petrichor”, on the fragmentation of the self and the distributed consciousness in Utopia Science Fiction.

“Helianthus”, an anarchist poem about changing the meaning of work, in Solarpunk Magazine.

“An ode to the stone cold gaze”, about Medusa, in Daughter of Sarpedon: Tempered Tales, from Brigids Gate.

If you haven’t voted yet, it would mean the world to me if you considered my poems.

Short Stories I enjoyed in February and March

Eva

Hello! Summer is here!

I read 33 stories during these two months, so I thought I’d make a post about them together. So many stories, so little time.

As always, here we go in no particular order:

For sale: One Unicorn Saddle, Mostly Disenchanted by Aimee Picchi in Translunar Travelers Lounge: A short, fun and cute story over the sadness and disappointment for your run-away unicorn and how internet strangers can help you realize what really happened. ?

Gennesaret by Phoenix Alexander in Beneath Ceaseless Skies: What is escaping from what you know when you know nothing else? And who will pay the price? A short and sad story about taking the dangerous leap towards change and going in blind.

Metal like blood in the Black by T. Kingfisher in Uncanny: A unique story about two machines, their relationship with their father and how they managed to survive on their own against a villainous figure. I really enjoyed this one.

An Incomplete Account of the Case of the Bird-talker in Yaros by Eleanna Castroianni in Fireside: From 1967-1974, during the years of the Greek Junta, the island of Yaros in the Aegean was used as a prison for the political prisoners. This is a gentle story in the form of short interviews from the prisoners about the living conditions in prison as well as their personal experiences with the regime.

 

Poetry:

A Jar of Condensed Milk by Gretchen Tesshmer in Strange Horizons

The Prophet, to His Angel by Bogi Takàcs in Fantasy Magazine

Return to the Cities by Marie Vibbert in The Future Fire

Eosphosphorus by Avra Margariti in Eye to the Telescope

A Message From Her Feline Self, Unborn, to Her Cousin, Whose Ancestors Were Once Wolves by Jessica Cho in Fireside 

Shreds and Tatters by Jennifer Crow in Kaleidotrope

Short stories I enjoyed in January

Eva

A very late post considering, but my notes are frowning at me and I have to oblige. January was a great month reading wise and I read a lot and very good short stories. As always, here you’ll find both old and new pieces in no particular order. Just the way I put them down on my notes. (You can also see that when I like a magazine or an author I kind of … don’t let go.)

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Stories and Poems I liked in March

Eva

In March, I finally managed to go back to reading short stories, which has helped change my mood to the better. I didn’t have a plan in the way I chose what I read. In the following list there older stories and newer stories, same venues and same authors. Most of them are flash stories, because it was easier for me to focus for a shorter amount of time. But they are all unique and interesting.

So, there you go!

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