This issue of Shimmer inadvertently celebrates growing things; the planting of life into the ground so that more life can flourish. Seeds. Water. Sunlight. Dare I say, it’s basic science, in a time when science is under threat. Perhaps it has always been.
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Fallow, by Ashley Blooms
They find the bottle in the barn. There are a lot of things there, whole piles of things: tractor-part things, tire things, cutting things and bolting things, all tired things, slowly fading toward the same color of rusty brown. The inside of the barn smells of stale hay and beer. Misty picks the bottle that is the least broken and William holds it between two fingers and lets the water drain from its open mouth onto the packed-earth floor. (6200 words)
Feathers and Void, by Charles Payseur
We are crows, circling round the wake of death, black wings silent as we glide, waiting, waiting. The big one’s gonna hit. Any second now. Iv’s thoughts coat mine like oil, slide away, always so clear in the moment but impossible to hold on to. Iv, my crow. My shell. My ship. (5700 words)
We Lilies of the Valley, by Sonja Natasha
If Yvonne presses her cheek to the thick window of the space station, and cranes her neck just so, she can see a crescent slice of Earth, marbled in desert. She traces what she can see of the western coast of Mexico. Her toes just barely graze the floor as she floats with her elbows braced against the window ledges. Beyond Earth’s curve, there’s the lingering haze of Siding Spring 4’s comet tail. (2400 words)
Dandelion, by John Shade
Before the border wall, we scatter. Dandelions. The nanomachines grind us down and we float up and through the cracks, molecule to molecule, like holding hands. (2400 words)
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