Abyss & Apex

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Hugo-Nominated Magazine of Speculative Fiction

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Site title: Abyss & Apex | Hugo-Nominated Magazine of Speculative Fiction
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“Mysteries” by Jennifer Crow
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Jennifer Crow https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/9-Jennifer-Crow.mp3 Mysteries I don’t know what blessing we were supposed to coax from God’s tight fist with our birth or death, sacrifices made hazy in a landscape of worst-case scenarios building to an apocalypse of failed prophecies. Forget agendas: our desires take shape during the worst season of our lives, and we hope only for numbness to spread from synapse to synapse until our nerves melt into protoplasmic goo, a mystery for aliens to ponder when they arrive on our burnt cinder of a planet. That’s the best we can dream, here at the end of most things, to leave questions behind like progeny, our systems of belief mere bubbles erupting from the cosmic foam. Throughout life we put on identities like new shoes, trying to outgrow our worst memories, only to find they live in us still, laces double-knotted to keep u
“Alice” by John C. Mannone
Sep 30, 2026 · original
John C. Mannone https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/8-John-C.-Mannone.mp3 Alice ………… After the 2019 Street Mural by William Lunsford ………… on the Southland Books & Café, Maryville, TN ………… I. For a moment, I step outside the mural into sound of the world. I am plagued by the quiet chaos painted on the wall: Books flying around my head, equations leaking out through the blanket-thick mist of history. Have we figured out a better way than cannon balls and bayonets? I understand the nuclear physics of war. But not the decay of the nuclear family. What has society done? Fallen down a rabbit hole, listened to the cold indifference of doped-up politicians propped up on mushroom caps —their podiums— and in delirium, they run away with the queen of hearts into her upside-down world where insanity is mad-hatter normal. What else is new under the sun? The mural is an overspray
“Prearranged Departure” by Ann Thornfield-Long
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Ann Thornfield-Long https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/7-Ann-Thornfield-Long.mp3 Prearranged Departure In Key West, I go to the pier where the cruise ships dock//and watch the holy sun go down. As it sizzles into the sea I think // I can do this at home. Doesn’t the sun set everywhere? At home, I visit the cemetery at twilight // look both ways in case the train to heaven is coming // but it only moves to and fro in a flat world // not the round world of ships. I lift my hand, the sun shirres into clouds // I think of the wings over waters of Key West, Icarus and his exuberance. Night and the stars erupt from indigo // two at a time, melting the icy heavens all the nouns reign on me // but it’s too dark to write them down and I am still chockfull of day // so I watch the fireflies who send me words in Morse Code: Dah-dah-dit. Dah-dah-dah, Dah-dit-dit. In the late su
“Vindication” by Eileen Tynion
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Eileen Tynion https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/6-Eileen-Tynion.mp3 Vindication “There are no beings in the sky,” ………… my mother said to me. “And nowhere else does life exist ………… beyond this world of ours.” “But mama,” said the child I was, ………… “The lenses at my school Show other planets circling suns. They’re possibilities for places we might live, or see ………… a different form of life.” “Oh, hush,” she said, but with a smile. ………… “Those scientists are keen On making stories of their finds ………… to entertain us all. But see it with a skeptic’s eye ………… lest you be thought a fool. If proof arrives, well, then we might ………… engage with silly dreams.” And off she swam, her head erect, ………… her fins discreet and prim. I float across this salty pool ………… within our speeding orb, And hear my mother’s words again, ………… as we traverse the vast Expanse of space and time t
“The Body as Archive” by Joely Williams
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Joely Williams The Body As Archive Scientists will tell you the bones hold everything. DNA like library stacks, each gene a catalog card filed under a surname that changed at the border, a language that died in a generation. I carry the full record of a passage I did not make. Salt water in the marrow. The specific gravity of a departure. Every ancestor who survived the crossing is filed somewhere in the left ventricle, cross-referenced under: hope, under: terror, under: what the body will do when the world gives it no choice. I have requested these records. The body responds slowly. The body is not a fast archive. But it holds. It always holds. _______________ Joely Williams is an Afro-Boricua poet from the South Bronx currently living in South Carolina, where she is still adjusting to the silence and the alarming number of churches visible from a single intersection. She is the author
“Triton at Perihelion” by Stuart Greenhouse
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Stuart Greenhouse https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/4-Stuart-Greenhouse.mp3 Triton at Perihelion ………… i. Soon I breathe. 672 hours by your heart’s beat— two million beats I mean. I get confused. 672 is the tidal period of that core you stand on. The number is of shared significance: soon I will pass some time upon my face what you, your cells’ cells’ insides oscillating, keep easily— a heat so strong that ice can melt. What is it like to live where ice can melt? ………… ii. I move, a drop; 672 cycles of your nervous heart I’ll thaw; 38 degrees Kelvin, then 39.3, just warm enough to weep skyward, life-like; that is, to sublimate my methane-and-nitrogen-clenched outer face from rink-smooth chitin to a moist, warm air life-bearing-like — you breathe nitrogen gas mostly, where you live, don’t you? That means two million beats I get to be like you: convective, energetic, s
“Vinespeak” by Lindsay Duncan
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Lindsey Duncan https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/3-Lindsey-Duncan.mp3 Vinespeak The vintner faithful listens to what the vines might say: the murmur of Mourvèdre dark, the voice of Viognier. Seedlings cradled in anemic clay peep like the nestlings of a lark; the vintner faithful listens to what the vines might say. Creeping, winding, trellis trained or untamed splay, the grapevines wait for sun and soil to spark the voice of Viognier. Mature, veraison iridescence ablaze, the grapes clamor for freedom; to make his mark, the vintner faithful listens to what the vines might say. Slumbering, clasped in oak or steel barrel’s sway, grape must rumbles, its rambling remark the voice of Viognier. Poured from darkness into day, Wine sings full-throated, gold or blush or dark. The vintner faithful listens to what the vines might say, and hears the phoenix voice of Viognier. _
“Kyrielle to a Dragon” by Michael Mingo
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Michael Mingo https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2-Michael-Mingo.mp3 Kyrielle to a Dragon Terrible one who tars the skies with smoke, whose spine could choke the glare of the noon sun with its sheer size: pretend that you are unaware. I am no mercenary sword, no enterprising legionnaire. What use to me is what you hoard? Pretend that you are unaware. Flight from approaching lightning brought my form into your lightless lair. Refuge is all my spirit sought. Pretend that you are unaware. Are the scorched skeletons among your riches signals to despair? Suppress the fire on your tongue; pretend that you are unaware. However loud my breathing sings, however bright my shivers flare under the beating of your wings, pretend that you are unaware. However clean your jaws could thresh my muscles, sever sinews, tear the fibers of my frozen flesh, pretend that you are unaware. A
“Very Few Good Dragons” by Christiaan Sabatelli
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Christiaan Sabatelli https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1-Christiaan-Sabatelli.mp3 Very Few Good D ragons ………… after Mary Karr Not the embodiment of chaos, skinned in scale and muscle, nor the endless appetite and foul tempered claws. Not the fire leaping from jaws, making the trees shine like copper and blood, the color of a hoard guarded away from the world. My friend the medievalist says we misunderstand the dragons of legend and nightmare, of role-playing games that bear their name. To understand them, he says, picture a parent whose children have flown from the nest, the emptiness suddenly cavernous around them. Gone is the youth that once defined them, the hobbies and habits of who they were. Unremembered is the self that used to be. So, they seek out small joys, trinkets of identity, and guard the glittering treasure against any who would take that away, agai
Introduction to Poetry Issue 100 by John C. Mannone
Sep 30, 2026 · original
Introduction to Issue 100 (Q4, Oct 2026) One of our own, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, has left us for the heavenlies. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association has a tribute posted for David on their webpages: Remembering David C. Kopaska-Merkel (1957-2026) We will miss his kindness and his wit. Please enjoy his poem, “Flying,” which appeared in issue 76 (Oct 2020)

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