Victor Forna

May 22, 2024 | nightmare-magazine.com | Wendy Wagner |Victor Forna

CW: death, dying. I first saw them one evening in May. I couldn’t tell what they were: small, like kids, like me, but they rustled, raffia fronds for skin. My eyes fizzing with dreams, I found Mama cradled on the sofa, hugging herself. She wore that faded floral top she loved so much, her back turned to me. She was sobbing, gently heaving. Dull sunlight through the window blinds. “Good morning.”Mama sniffed in her tears. She sat up and faced me, cheeks damp, but she wore the brightest smile on her lips.

Apr 4, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Abdulrazaq Salihu |E. N. Díaz |Victor Forna |Catherine Rockwood

On the night my father died,My mother is caught huntingMosquitoes to protect ourBodies from being stungLike insects do to flowers. Something visits the earth,Forgets its beauty and castsAn alien glow over the loweringOf my father into his grave. I catch all the auroras beforeThey fall into my father’s graveAnd this is the only thing whisperingDarkness into my mothers eyes. I carry the pebbles and arrangeThem around my mother’s acheI forget to glitter. Because I knowNo other light than my mother’s.

Apr 3, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Roy Salzman-Cohen |E. N. Díaz |Abdulrazaq Salihu |Victor Forna

It’s taken me about a year to get this review written, and I’m not sure why. The Justice of Kings and its sequel, The Tyranny of Faith, are now among my favorite books, ever, and it seems that it should be easy to articulate why. (The third book, The Trials of Empire, is out in February.)The Justice of Kings is about Vonvalt, an Imperial Justice of the Sovan Empire, and how he loses his idealism when the Empire begins to crumble around him.

Apr 2, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Victor Forna |E. N. Díaz |Abdulrazaq Salihu |Catherine Rockwood

The Vermilion RoadWe’re two thousand light-years from home. Earth gravity, beaten. Solar System. Milky Way. I hear fire, I hear creaking, I hear prayers to evanescing gods—I hold my sister’s hand. We’ve made it, halfway,with so much making it left to do. Between the 2nd & 3rd pillarsI blink, and how many aeons are in asecond of darkness? Sabɔ-finɔ looms over me, sweet star-voiced sister, silhouetted against the rays of an unfamiliar sun. She bends, helps me to my liquid legs. You okay?

Apr 2, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | E. N. Díaz |Victor Forna |Abdulrazaq Salihu |Catherine Rockwood

VoyeurI cut my foreskin with my sewing scissorsand buried it in the backyard. I watered it for daysuntil another boy that looked just like meclawed out of the earth’s womb. I inspected him carefully,tracing his cherry red lips with my tongue,biting his bubblegum pink nipples until they bruisedand he moaned. I placed him on all fours over the warm mossand spread his furry cheeks—his scent, just like mine!You have to be sweetlike sun-warmed honey,that’s what daddy says.