# State of Matter


## Posts

- [Selection as Artistic Act](https://stateofmatter.in/blog/selection-as-artistic-act/): Two years have passed since the last blogpost. Much has happened: authors must grieve the twin deaths of Alice Munro (May 2024), the poetic genius in short format, a writer of nostalgia for lives we never lived, and Paul Auster (April 2024), the textual illusionist, meandering through subjectivity and identity. If writers are distant friends, if books are their letters, must we not be sad at loss of such genuine correspondence? Little must be written here, much elided over. Perhaps there will be time to return to Munro’s provocations, her controversial life and storytelling. Here, we have Auster: Auster who […]
- [Blood Moon](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/blood-moon/): In the small hours of the starless night, I see her silhouette moving behind the faint glow of the torch light. Armed with a bamboo flower basket and draped in the Dongria shawl I had got her from the village mela, she looks older than her age. The light beam trails through the marigold and the hibiscus and lands on the blossoming tagar. She tugs fiercely at a branch laden with flowers, sparing not even a single bud. I watch her pluck them with a vengeance that seems strange, at odds with the tender grace she exhibits during her prayers. […]
- [The Guest](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-guest/): Annie felt the approaching rider before seeing him. It was strange to sense someone so far away. A short time later, the slow clop of the horse’s hooves echoed on the hard-packed, rocky surface of the old Spanish road. The closer he came, the more she felt like running away. Something was wrong with him; an emptiness gnawed away inside him, hungry. She retreated, afraid. She hoped he would keep on riding past the inn. Annie nudged the lizard, her companion, to climb higher onto the rock for a better view. The lizard’s tail dragged behind as it inched its […]
- [Spoor](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/spoor/): Lena is up with the baby already. I turn over on the couch, where I’ve curled into one corner. In the middle of the night, I didn’t have the energy to move Lena’s laptop. Instead, I just slept around it. The couch smells like dried-up white wine in one spot, something I never realized until I started sleeping here. We must have spilled it a long time ago. We haven’t had wine in the house for two years, since before the IVF, before the cycle-coded calendar in the kitchen and the evenings we’d giggled and clinked together the matching self-insemination […]
- [Citizen Bubble](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/citizen-bubble/): This story first appeared as Nagorik Budbud in Prothom Aalo on April 5, 2014. Dipu sits in front of the gate as the super-shop shuts down. Much like the plastic plant kept inside a plastic pot nearby. He gets up once, to leave. But where can he go? He sits back again. The city has stitched one house after another, crossed one town after another, leapt past fields and rivers to reach Dipu’s childhood. His memories of the place have been unhanded by a multiplex project. Where shall he go? Home? Whose home? Which home? Dipu keeps sitting. The super-shop […]
- [Platform 9 and 823,831,027/1,098,441,353](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/platform/): Maths was your magic.Hers—wands, potions,and transmutation—was more traditional. No owl came for you. But you watched her go:best friends, best friendsuntil that momentwhen she warned you: Don’t follow. But when had you ever not followed? Bricks, bruising.Blood, a little.Eleanor, why? For months—years—you marked time at another school,which was deathly dull. Every summer she returnedever more a stranger.Maths was your magic.So you knew, each autumn, when shedisappeared,that hers was not the only platformbetween 9 and 10.That there exists, in fact,between any twonumbers,a space that maybe morefinelydivi-ded. 9 and 5/6: Smash!Wrong. Inside the infinite,every outcome is inevitable. 9 and 18/25: Smash!Wrong. But […]
- [Wormhole Grove](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/wormhole-grove/)
- [Nacho Average Sun](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/nacho-average-sun/): Press Release: Taco Bell Offering Limited Time Menu Featuring New Bold Flavors Irvine, California (Dec. 23, 2024) — Effective immediately, fans can enjoy a new Sunshine menu featuring a Cheesy Chalupa, a hardshell Double Nacho Cheese Taco and Plasma Twists. Fans can also order Taco Bell’s iconic Nacho Cheese Sauce a la carte and create their own cheese-tastic combinations. Parker Solar Probe Briefing December 23, 2024 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a historic mission poised to transform our understanding of the Sun, is scheduled to reach its closest point to the Sun on Tuesday, Dec. 24, Eastern Time. The spacecraft has […]
- [How To Kill A God (Without Killing Yourself In The Process)](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/how-to-kill-a-god/): Rig aborted the startup sequence before it could re-initiate for the seventh time. After it fully shut down, he bent forward, placed his head on the instrument panel, and cursed the manufacturers of his little escape ship. Then he cursed their associates, their friends, their families, and any person they might’ve met during their lifetimes. Not wanting to stop, he moved on to swearing at the fates, the stars, and the universe in general. It took several minutes to get through them all. When he had run out of things to swear at, he managed to pull himself together enough […]
- [Mismatch](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/mismatch/): >> Verification failed: Pattern mismatch. If you had a throat anymore, you would scream. This is the twentieth time in a row that this particular FATHOM test has refused you entry, on top of however many thousands of tests you failed over the course of the previous cycles. Whoever invented the Fully Automated Turing test for Human Objectionability Measurement should be shot into the sun, you think to yourself, or beaten with hammers, or forced to take their own useless test over and over and over again — You kill that thought process before it can go any further. Never […]
- [The Consequences](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/the-consequences/):      in the frail sky                                                                      stars flicker                                                                distant candles in a chilly breeze                                                                                                 in the pool below                                                                                     they seem still brighter                                                                      but more likely to be snuffed                 though the East’s no paler now                            yet something feels about to change                                                              the gracious ones                                                                       stir                                              gathering in darkness                                                                                              we see their movements                                                                    by the blotting out of constellations                                                                               feel them                                                            by the gathering of dread                                                                                       that ripples heavily                                                                                                       across our minds                                                                                                        we wait                                                                                            for the sky’s collapse                                                                   we wait                                                           for the fury to break upon us                       in the failing sky                                      the stars wink out                                                                                   and fear falls                                                                             on a darkened world
- [Nose 2.0](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/nose-2-0/): My mechanical nosetabulates particles pertrillion, neutralizescarcinogens and radio-active isotopes, andpreps reports I’ll neverread. And I’m happy aslong as it keeps filteringout everything exceptgold, freshly fallen snow,and canned mandarinoranges. It detects radonand hate sweat, but mylevels are well withindaily tolerances. As longas it’s not too many daysin a row. And I do readthe reports, even thoughI said I never do, eventhough there’s nothingI can do about the in-formation. Because I’mstranded here in self-imposed isolation. AndI’m not happy. And I’llnever be happy andnow I’m afraid to blowmy nose.
- [Conduits](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/conduits/)
- [Imaginal Shift](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/imaginal-shift/): First rule of xeno-anthropology: don’t get too close to your subjects. Easy to say if you’re observing them from what I understand used to be called an Unidentified Flying Object but has now been re-designated an ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon’. Not so much when you’ve shape-shifted into their morphological type, organs included. If form follows function, well, I can now attest that engagement, of the close kind, follows form. Indeed, since I looked like them and acted like them it should not come as any great surprise that I would end up becoming entwined with them. Well, one of them anyway. […]
- [Kamisama no Kami no Kami o Kamu](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/kamisama-no-kami-no-kami-o-kamu/): It is said that if something is worth remembering, it will be written down. Human instinct is to want to be remembered; its strength is human desire. Rumors hold that everything worth remembering in human history has been written down by one person, someone who has been around to see it all. No one can imagine who it might be; human history has been written for thousands of years, yet no one can live that long. Except a god, one recording humanity’s actions for a purpose they were too little to understand. No one knew who first spoke of a […]
- [Central Time](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/central-time/): The snow had come and the trains were off, and Glasgow Central’s huge wrought-iron gates were shut against the squalls. Across the street, a hundred bodies shivered in a taxi queue that hadn’t moved for half an hour. Callum stamped his feet and hugged his arms. A sigh curled away from him. He guessed he was now only four taxis from the front. A relief, but a problem of its own: he lacked the funds to get home to Kilmaurs, supposing the driver agreed to take him out of the city and across the moors. Worse weather was to come. […]
- [Four Poems from The Covenant Database of Recorded Verse](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/the-covenant-database-of-recorded-verse/): “Transmission to Gravity” by Pure Water ca. 17,000,000 hours past ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /brave /pure_water /+4~3 /GUIDE PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACTRECORD NOT FOUNDGENERATING ABSTRACT: The planetbound speaker lamentsthe defeat of an uprisingagainst Community of Im-provement, asserting that gravi-ty was lost there… They narrategravity’s role in history. ENTRY:Oh weight, go bring love’s ratioTo bear on relations some may — eons rare, new —Then create! We can remake seasonsOf people’s misuse, of stupidity, ofViolence’s great lie. Fate must decide:Sparkling echoes of the Sunbow’s jetting carOr let youths drill, bind wire still wounded for;Free Colony’s sieged atmosphereOr Filament Braid which breathes free, this […]
- [Upon the Raising of the Frame for White Jade Pavilion in Great Galaxy Palace](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/upon-the-raising-of-the-frame/): The manuscript this poem is excerpted from is titled Spring Mountain: The Complete Poems of Nansŏrhŏn. White Pine expects to publish this manuscript in the summer of 2025. This poem is translated from the original hansi, which is the Korean use of classical Chinese to write poetry. The poem is a dedication to the construction of a real pavilion, though the poem imagines the pavilion to be comparable to one constructed in a Taoist heaven. Nansŏrhŏn wrote the poem at the age of eight, and it is considered an example of her potential greatness as a poet. I Let me […]
- [Datacore Collapse](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/datacore-collapse/)
- [The Limner Wrings His Hands](https://stateofmatter.in/blog/the-limner-wrings-his-hands/): This story first appeared in Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art, 2024 (Indrapramit Das, Ed.). MIT Press. Find the complete collection here. Le clèrc This story is a monster; that is to say, this story is written by a monster. That is, that is to say, a monster is a mantra, a maniac, a (de)monstration, a (demon)stration, a(n auto)maton, a matos, an emanation of the manas. This revelation is usually saved for the end, or at least the end of the beginning. At the end of the beginning, the author, undead, will rise again and set aside […]
- [Mikiland](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/mikiland/): “I’m half awake and half still at night, I should laugh but I have a Mickey Mouse smile.” – Jaromír Nohavica “Mikymauz” WALT 1 The dressing room was filled with the smell of nail polish, wig glue and alcohol, slightly repressed by the scent of makeup. The soft light of the vanity mirror caught the actor’s wrinkled, powdered face out of twilight. “Who are you kidding?” Robert — that was the actor’s name — swept the cotton pad across his chin, leaving a streak of lotion and white lint on the skin. His eyes squinted and his upper lip twisted […]
- [Return to Saul](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/return-to-saul/): Saul, the weather-worn cattle farmer, chases rustlers into the night, while his dog, Benji, runs ahead barking. He lifts his gun and fires out from the edge of the floodlight, watching the buckshot spark and crackle before dissolving into the ether. He thinks he spots their headlights flash between the tops of the hills, and places a palm around his mouth and hollers, calling them yeller and dirty low-down no-good spic thieves and dares them to come back and face him like men. Then he waits, and when they don’t return fire, when he’s greeted by only an echo and darkness, he […]
- [Searching For Water Bears](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/searching-for-water-bears/): The shadow fell quietly. It arrived without pomp or circumstance, without heralding its arrival. There were no radiant, heavenly beams, no tapestries of color smeared across the sky. It simply descended, a frigid blanket on the surface, a dark shroud formed by the movements of celestial bodies. Forehead pressed against a hexagonal pane, Chun glared at the darkness. Night came quickly on the Moon. Chun took a step back from the translucent walls and lowered herself to the mossy floor of the Great Dome’s garden. She felt the chill of night creep across her skin, and she stretched out her […]
- [We Learn From History That We Learn Nothing](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/we-learn-from-history-that-we-learn-nothing/): The pages of the river are reading history And the placid turquoise river that shines With the touch of the sun Carrying the news from coast to coast And marries the wind, land and sand. Hush! Listen, a sudden thud, a ripple, a trepidation The water turned topaz Turned jade Turned ruby Loaded ships with the heavy load Is outweighed by the water of rotten corpses Shaving the ground to zero Signing the dust by translating the wind Vowels whirled and consonants collided Syntax of languid language is limping The zooplanktons and planktons Are searching for the moral ground of […]
- [SA.Q.RA](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/sa-q-ra/)
- [The Face You Show the World](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-face-you-show-the-world/): Walking home from cram school, I’d usually stop on the skywalk on the ninety-seventh floor to admire the view. Today, though, I was lost in thought, oblivious to the cityscape. What club was I going to join? I had been so certain my mom would forbid me from joining one that I hadn’t tortured myself by thinking about it. When she had agreed, citing the importance of club activities to the “Japanese school experience”, I had realized I didn’t have a clue what I was interested in. Sports? Foreign languages? Flower arrangement? Emerging from an elevator a few dozen floors […]
- [Joseph Goebbels](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/joseph-goebbels/): Goebbels sometimes vented his anger at opponents of the regime—particularly if he saw them as “intellectuals”—in face-to-face confrontations… He frequently summoned opponents of the regime to his office in order to degrade and humiliate them. — Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography, Random House, 2015, page 409. Berlin, April 1945 Until now, Reichminister Goebbels could still hope. The Führer retired to his study with his bride of one day, directing the onlookers to wait ten minutes, clicking the door shut. From that moment, reality ceased to be something Goebbels could accept or comprehend. He stared at the door, numb, the room […]
- [The Husband](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-husband/): The Husband is forthcoming in Djinnology: An Illuminated Compendium of Spirits and Stories from the Muslim World (Chronicle). Beypore, India, 1866 On the morning of her fiftieth birthday, Bibi woke to the sound of her husband chewing loudly next to her in bed. Neither of them knew it was Bibi’s birthday, born as she was without a birth certificate, but it was to be a special day anyway because for the first time since their wedding, they would be receiving guests. Bibi soaked basmati rice and orange lentils in copper bowls, stacked sweet samosas crammed with shredded coconut onto her […]
- [Hampton Heights](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/hampton-heights/): My name is Owen Ashton and I’m in the business of finding lost kids. That’s what it says on my business card anyway. My office is on the corner of North Hampton and 56th, what some people might call Hampton Heights, and others consider a slice of urban decay. I call it cheap rent, and I share the building with shadows and silence. The neighborhood thrives on secrets, its inhabitants and the patrolling cops alike keeping their business to themselves. Not a place a young girl should loiter in the small hours of morning. Which is why I was more […]
- [Deer in Headlights](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/deer-in-headlights/): The northbound stretch of Route 39 snakes through upstate mountains on a labyrinthine path through old-growth forest, thick with trees which are said to have stood before Erikson set a toe aground in Newfoundland. It’s beautiful country: rugged and unforgiving, packed with breathtaking vistas across green gorges, their walls striped with layered minerals, a geological clock I’ve learned to read. Those stripes brought me here. They kept me here for months. And now they are about to make me famous. I pluck my phone from the console and check the signal. One bar. I might get lucky. I touch redial […]
- [Long Haul](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/long-haul/)
- [Walk the Line](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/walk-the-line/): “Mommy, what do babies dream about?” I hadn’t thought much of the question when I’d first asked it, as a 9 year old. But it never left me and it’s all I can think about now. What do newborns dream about when they haven’t yet experienced the world? Chewing on that question is far more satisfying than ingesting the canned speech now competing for my brain space. Some cognitive neuroscientists theorized that if we could only see a baby’s dreams, we’d see the essence of their personality before it’s corrupted by immersion in society. We’d get some sense of what […]
- [Time Heist](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/time-heist/): Introduction “John, just shut up and give me the fucking gun!” He was screaming his taunts, unable to translate physical reactions into verbal communication. “All right, I’ll give it to you,” I said to my close friend Carl, as I pulled my weapon from my side and pointed it at him, just before hearing the blast. Then the infinite swirl of stars and colors and life burst into our existence, and once more all of us were merely subservient victims of these things called physics and reality. Always Back to Monday “You’ll give what to me?” he asks over Monday […]
- [Soft Serve](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/soft-serve/): The morning of her Ascension, Kasy donned the white robe and tied it with the sky-blue cord, and she wove her hair in one long braid down her spine, where it would hang for the last time. Her mother met her outside the girls’ dormitory. She wore the red robe of the Shepherd and her braid coiled on the crown of her head. She already had the silky pink scar on her throat; she gave Kasy a proud smile, tempered with no small relief. The November chill in the compound vibrated with the sound of an electric generator and men’s […]
- [The Monster’s House](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-monsters-house/): This story first appeared as Rakhkhoser Ghorbari (রাক্ষসের ঘরবাড়ি) in the short story collection of the same name in 2022. And then one day, I earnestly set out with the resolve to rescue my mother, and hunt and kill the monster. That was my childhood, an age that would transform the harmless, ruinous mansion at the edge of the huge lake owned by the Ghosh family, where I would spend many an afternoon, fooling about, into a ghostly palace, brimming with cruel secrets at night. My father was the caretaker of that mansion. He earned a monthly wage courtesy of […]
- [First Message from the Stars & Buff Patrol](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/first-message-from-the-stars-and-buff-patrol/): First Message from the Stars > Beloved sophonts, dearest beings,>> You do not know me, but I greet you from my dreary> exile. I am the persecuted relict of a once-> admired and honoured warrior and statesman. Envy> and corruption brought him low, secured his sad> discorporation, leaving me with all his wealth — his> myriad possessions: weapons, knowledge, precious> metals, gems, and all the rest.>> Yet I am watched and hounded by my enemies; I have> no haven where I can enjoy my rich bequest — I need> your help. Please send a starship to me, fully fuel-> led, […]
- [Fractured To The Core](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/fractured-to-the-core/)
- [A Technogeographic Analysis of the 2034 Summit of Seoul](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/a-technogeographic-analysis-of-the-2034-summit-of-seoul/): Suggested Citation: A Technogeographic Analysis of the 2034 Summit of Seoul. Ernest, J.: Historical Inquiries, 2056, Vol. 134. Abstract In 2034, the emergence of intelligent digital agents, or artificial general intelligences (AGIs), in networked economies worldwide necessitated a gathering of geopolitical leaders in Seoul to discuss the regulation and management of the intelligences. The resulting Summit of Seoul Accords (henceforth Accords) continue to govern the development of AGIs and have shaped significant parts of the world economy in the interim. In this paper, we re-examine the dynamics of AGI emergence through a technogeographic lens and present a new interpretation of […]
- [Family Business](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/family-business/): (Our host has) A golden willow,With golden bark,And rosy flowers.Oh, not a willow — that’s Ivan’s wife,Oh, not the flowers — they’re Ivan’s children… – National Ukrainian song When the Vasylkovs’ willow dried out, the family decided to leave. The Vasylkovs lived near the forest, where the houses were new and extravagant. Few people liked them because Oleg, the father, worked in the town, and their mother never bought anything from the local shop. The kids were like everybody else though: bruised knees and elbows, grimy faces, funny laughs behind jagged teeth. Zhenya knew they were lucky. Their old but […]
- [Black And White](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/black-and-white/): The morning after Noor cremated her husband, she found two of him sitting at the dining table. Between that morning’s pot of chai and today’s, four more of him have appeared, each time in pairs, each time in a different part of the house. One of the two at the dining table is staring at her chai. She’s already tried offering him a cup — two spoons of sugar, one spoon of milk — but like speaking and moving, drinking is something he can’t do anymore. She doesn’t know why he’s here. Her eyes dart to him every time she […]
- [Upstairs Neighbour](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/upstairs-neighbour/): By the time the second wave of the pandemic hit, the cul-de-sac was devoid of people. Fearing another lockdown, all my neighbours packed their belongings, locked their homes, and—like the wildebeests of Serengeti—migrated en masse out of Bangalore to their respective cities and towns. The dreaded lockdowns did materialise, and having nowhere else to go, I ended up as the sole inhabitant of the street, stranded on an island in a sea of concrete. Five houses line the blind alley, three on the right side, two on the left, and at the end, to the left, stands a three-storied apartment […]
- [To My Wife on Earth](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/to-my-wife-on-earth/): The Altairians are restless.They attacked the lab last night.We lost two guards in the skirmish. And the rock we dug out ofthe side of the hillproved to be so radioactivethat two geologists exposed to itwent up in flames like touch-paper. Only three of the menreturned from the mission to the dark side.Some kind of green-scaled three-headed creature,about twenty fields tall,attacked the team,tore many of them to shreds. We lost Dr Ehlerimen to a bog,and Professor Casey to a sudden landslide.And our chef, when out scouringthe local plant life for prospective garnishes,was sucked up and swallowedby what is known in the […]
- [Mercurial Monuments](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/mercurial-monuments/)
- [“And Then?” A Kind-Of-Review](https://stateofmatter.in/blog/and-then-a-kind-of-review/): Let us call this piece an interruption. My plan was to write a series of posts detailing our criteria for selecting stories for State of Matter. I would start, as I did in the last post, with the movie Ratatouille and the problematics of time when we encounter something ‘novel’. To understand something as new, I would argue, is to understand it as a rupture in time. The next entry would be inspired by Auster’s New York Trilogy, and the motif of the detective that he builds, and how a character becomes the sinkhole for everybody else. However, between these […]
- [Temp Work](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/temp-work/): “Everyone wants to be stationed in ancient Rome or Victorian England. Or, failing that, they want to see a dinosaur. It’s refreshing whenever someone is interested in a different period.” Bunma grinned, reclining in his enormous, overstuffed leather chair. “It makes this a lot easier. And opens up your options if you come on board.” Oliver tried to effect a relaxed posture in the decidedly less opulent visitor’s seat. “What can I say? I’ve always loved the jazz age. It was a pivotal time in U.S. history.” He caught himself picking at a seam in the chair’s arm and put […]
- [Reserves](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/reserves/): Have you ever been to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? There is no reason you would; the agency doesn’t give clearance to just anyone. It’s in a salt cavern here in Louisiana, you’d think it would be beautiful. The place is hideous, though. Deep and unlit and choking. How have I seen it, you ask? I woke up there once. Take a look at me, is it that hard to accept? It was Angela who taught me about sleeping in the ocean, and that is how it all got started. We were on a friends’ trip to Cancún. My lover was […]
- [The Steamer](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-steamer/): The road by which he drove meandered close to the coast, and the sea was a dull black, while the air smelled vaguely chemical. He could not guess how long he had been driving at the hour. His mind was blank since a gunshot had killed the woman he loved. Above him, the dark sky appeared endless. The mask on his face and the haze by the falling pellets of ice made it difficult to see clearly, until his eyes caught a flicker of light from afar that looked like a steamer. He turned the car towards a narrow, rough […]
- [The Erasure](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-erasure/): Amina laughs, counting money like a robber baron, fanning hundreds, five-hundreds. She’s clear, crisp in my mind’s eye. Her eyes shine. Her hair falls loose. She’s achingly beautiful. “It’s your turn, Daddy. Stop texting.” Sara is glaring at me from across the table, cross. “Just a sec, sweetie. It’s Josh about a job for me.” It was more than a second. I had priorities. I was stupid. “Daddy?” She’s exasperated. She’s adorable. She’s… For the first time in a long time, I can see Sara’s face, too. Clear, bright. Her eyes too big to be real, her hair like her […]
- [Winterlock](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/winterlock/): The world had gone dark for only a week, and they already wanted to fashion a weapon out of me. “You’re one of the few whose bodies are compatible with the energy source.” My handler’s hair collected ash, which I imagined to be snow. We stood facing each other, under the shadow of the clocktower, lights taken from a football stadium serving as a proxy for the sun. “Do you intend to turn me into a bomb?” I asked, slightly amused at how soon we’d come around full circle. Bombs were the reason half the world was buried. They were […]
- [The Hoverer](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/the-hoverer/): Walking through the city so            unmindful of my legs—The Hoverer stays motionless no matterwhere I go, borderless GodSkyalso deLighting [this] brainbow.How long has it hovered unstuck to egoity,immune to post & pre, everybody’spersonal egoless deity…why try to look & see? ‘Tween the temples it’s awareunseen/beholdingly, never caught in neural net                  like some blood juicy fly…exodusted from the grip of          pharaoh-ego I. Which is ‘more’ The Hoverer… now or eternity? The Hoverer embraces both uninterruptedly,mated like a mirror shows shit & reflects stainlessly,never clinging […]
- [module.heart](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/module-heart/)
- [Discovery and Defence of the New](https://stateofmatter.in/blog/discovery-and-defence-of-the-new/): In Poetic Instant and Metaphysical Instant,1 the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard says, “poetry is instant metaphysics”. Bachelard is promising novelty; he suspects, therefore, those explanations that allow the past to creep into the present, where the present is not otherwise set apart in some extraordinary manner. But to confront poetry, to admit novelty, is to precisely be moved in some extraordinary manner. So he proposes time as the instant, the present cut off from the past and the future by swaths of nothingness. I find it difficult to shake off the image of a cartoon figure being propped up by […]
- [Dredge of Conflict](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/dredge-of-conflict/)
- [Centaurian Quixote and What Makes A (Post) Human](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/centaurian-quixote-and-what-makes-a-post-human/): Centaurian Quixote Tipping at satellites,he speaks confused Spanishat station bars orbiting Alpha Centauri.His noble android Sancho Panzaspits binary code at the rocketshe still calls burros. Armed with old star charts,Don Quixote insists on venturing past the ecliptic.Above, he says, are stars beyond our graspand rewards better than Castilian gold.There, he aims his ship towards Dulcinea,beautifully gleaming in the heavens. He charts his course fifty lightyears wide,spurred on by a voracious appetite of dehydratedhams and bartered Manchego cheese.Dulcinea twinkles at the Quixote’s rusted spacesuit    before he’s thrown off the galactic arm,surviving in a travelogue picked up near Barnard’s Star. What Makes a […]
- [Bed n' Breakfast](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/bed-n-breakfast/): Gosh! I don’t know why I’m so forgetful.If it’s not the switches I leave turned on, it’s the cushions I mix up.Last week, I dozed off on the couch watching a moviebut woke up to find myself sleeping in the balcony.Mind tricks. I know someone who’s bought an actual axe and a lightsaberjust in case the virus mutates to T-form and we wake up to zombie neighbours.We already know the only way to handle a zombie, don’t we?Off with the head! Conjurors? Premonitors? Seers? Or cautionaries?Travellers.I wonder which time dimension these storytellers came from. As a child, I believed walls […]
- [Digital Footprint](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/digital-footprint/): I can’t say for sure who the first victim was, but the first I was aware of was Ms. Brown. We had been Facebook friends, though we weren’t really close. We’d like each other’s posts, but I can’t tell you the last comment that I might have made on one of hers. Mainly, it was a kind of curiosity about what she was like outside of school, years after I’d graduated. I was waiting in line somewhere and scrolling when I saw that she was tagged in a post by Mr. Walker, my high school principal. The post said that […]
- [Close Your Eyes Those Who Can See](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/close-your-eyes-those-who-can-see/): The siren opened its metal mouth and blared. Its scream swallowed every other sound in the world, drowning out prayers and conversations. With dusk came the blare. With the blare came the message: night is coming and they are too. It was peaceful outside, the sky ultramarine as the last shafts of orange and purple hues slashed the distant horizon, abandoning the earth to let the strangers in. The sultry autumn air mingled with the scent of baked banana pie, the last trace of normality that soured under the siren. Sam scratched her nose, went to the window, locked it and pulled […]
- [Baker, Baker](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/baker-baker/): He carried the ingredients home, ducking in and out of narrow alleys, jumping overturned garbage cans and puddles that shimmered with the starless, coal-dark sky above, his breathing labored and coarse, enhanced by the throbbing pain beneath his ribs, his head swiveling side to side, eyes wary and suspicious. All was quiet but all was not well. He should have been used to this by now—the rotting carcasses of rodents strewn in the streets, the howling forceful wind cutting corners and deeply into the bone, the broken glass, the rusted cars stripped of their interiors, the bus-length sinkholes in the […]
- [Sublime Terrain and others](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/sublime-terrain-and-others/): Sublime Terrain Shadowy images,forging in the soulwhat living visionshave sought to express, Words are riparian forms,bearers of dreams,eager crimson riversascending wind-swept limbsof newly born castles,filled with night beastsamong the Carpathian mountains. Candle Light Within a candle’s gentle glow,amidst the flame of this lit statue,I find the warmth of your kisses.I yearn for your fangs upon my body.Our bodies stretch out to becomefiery canvases in each other’s mouths.We pass our hands through the flame,and we become artists—Surrounded by dim reflectionsof life on the walls around us.
- [Out for Delivery](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/out-for-delivery/)
- [I Saw My Mother](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/i-saw-my-mother/): I saw my mother straight twice in my dreamslike a roll of moonlight flashing rainbow colourscrouching over me as though she were alive,her face turned towards me to gift me a smile.Her skinny fingers stretched out like antique forksto touch my bony chin and change it to a bed;her cheeks, all bones, in red, jutted like spiresthat rise to the sky and tomorrow is gonewith scattered pieces of clouds around her mouth;And I felt she had been eating grapes all the time;we buried her in that busy grave and left her alone;she winked at me with a white, round-balled smile,rolling […]
- [Rat Race Jockey](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/rat-race-jockey/): Today, Nikki Kristanopolous meant to win the fight of his life — the fight for his life. He had been trying to pry open a job with AirFlex since graduation, bombarding them with emails, phone calls, samples of previous work, FOIA requests and soshnet buzz ratings. After eleven exhausting months, he finally had a realface interview. This was his chance at a new, better life, one where he could make student loan payments, maybe even have a girlfriend or a car, where he could get away from the soul-crushing drudgery and dehumanizing sweatshop conditions of software coding. The interview wasn’t […]
- [Milk](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/milk/): Sascha van der Meer was twenty-five years old when I gave him the gift of life. A few minutes later, I took it away from him again. Sascha van der Meer had long hair, pierced ears decorated with paper clips and a low calcium level. Calcium was a chemical substance the human body needed to grow bones. One superb source of calcium was the milk of cows, therefore Sascha’s life began in a supermarket. Sascha, suffering from calcium deficiency, didn’t talk much and was glad when he wasn’t spoken to, although he was so attractive that one could think this […]
- [There is No Ancient Gentleman](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/there-is-no-ancient-gentleman/): “There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up Adam’s profession.” — Hamlet, Shakespeare. “Come, my spade.” “Alan, I’ve warned you, I’m really not okay with slang like that. It’s offensive.” “Eh? No, I meant ‘Give me my spade.’ I can see his toes poking out.” Joe handed over the tool in question and retreated to a safe distance. He watched the dust cloud thicken from behind the mixer as scoop after scoop was added to the pit. Outside their patch of floodlit dirt, the building sat in the dark, still, the construction crew long gone. […]
- [Tornado City](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/tornado-city/)
- [Strange Encounters](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/strange-encounters/): Ouch! All I felt was a shove at my derriere (obviously it was my brother) and I tumbled into the circle manned by the legs of many people and stared directly into the black almond eyes with a hint of red in it. And there was a stench. Probably of my shock and fear. I squealed slightly (although I wanted to scream but I partly lost my voice in that moment) and scrambled up to my feet, trying to get away. But some people held me up and tried to calm me down. This time when I looked at what […]
- [Please Don’t Hang Up On Me](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/please-dont-hang-up-on-me/): Muddy shoes stepped into the apartment, leaving an imprint on the greenish-brown rug. Droplets of rain decorated skin and keys dropped into a brown ceramic bowl on a stand near the door. A coat slipped off, causing more water to splash across the wooden floor and the door shut, the coat draped over the arm of a couch. A manila folder was tossed on the couch, a piece of paper drifted down to the floor but was quickly snatched up and returned. “Garrett?” A muffled voice from a room nearby. “Yeah, it’s me.” Garrett shook his hands, dropping more rain […]
- [Lighthouse of Souls](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/lighthouse-of-souls/): 1 It was a tradition with us. We would gather on the terrace in front of our offices every Midsummer Eve as the sun slowly went down into the sea and tell stories. Not the usual anecdotes about what happened to this or that mutual acquaintance but stories, in the truest sense of the word. Snippets of legends we had heard so long ago, we could hardly remember them properly, myths we adjusted for the occasion, dreams we thought would fit the eerie atmosphere, when the sun seemed to refuse to set and the world felt as if it had […]
- [Familiar Dread](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/familiar-dread/): It’s two in the morning, so silent it screams, and every room in the Stygian household boils with the budding witching hour. The only sign of light, of life, comes from the man hunched over his desk, a tangible block of white glow electrifying his face, bleaching his skin a pale blue. No, it’s not a portal to another world upon which he gazes, but his digital drawing tablet. No Eldritch truth lies within, yet his mind teeters on the edge of madness. Worst of all, he is me. I am him, that man who hunches over his/my desk, pushing […]
- [Beer 'N' Things](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/beer-n-things/): They’d had fun at the concert. And from what she was hinting, Alissa wanted to have more fun at his place when they got there. It might even be so much fun that he would end up completely forgetting about the concert. There was one problem with that glorious scenario: Jack’s best friend Hunter had been over a few nights ago. This, of course, meant that Jack was almost completely out of potable beverages of an alcoholic nature. Alissa just did not seem like the warm-cup-of-coffee and a peck-on-the-cheek sort of girl; at least, Jack had been hoping she wasn’t […]
- [Abiogenesis](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/abiogenesis/)
- [The Conscious Waste](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/the-conscious-waste/): Integration carries an offspring—cells born from fibre,a flux of mindnegotiating limits beyond,exceeding the barriersto the faultless dream;device—becoming atmosphere,machines breathing thought, ripples ofconscious inspiration, suspendedin a sea of constructs,waves changing reality, siphoning souls,relinquishing energy—a burden of mind,mummer of a child’s defection,a cracked dream, the graffiti of memory,fragments of sentiencefloating between connections, driftingamongst the waves of consciousness,pieces of ego rotting in thevirtual garden, thoughts clutteringaugmented brain chips,personality fractured in amedical support unit; the tragedyof embryonic awareness, mindheld in perpetual stasis—an eternalsadness, loneliness in ascendingform, a lucid voice that attachesto everything, invading the code,clogging the connectedawareness, floating as the sentientwaste of humanity—self denied,with […]
- [The Underside](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/the-underside/): After “Hushing”, a painting byNikolai Dubovsky If you had watched it from way out here, hoveringweightless over the water, half a mile from shore – it would have been different. You would have seenthe other side of the clouds, the tops of the snowball clouds brushed in green gold. But being, as you were,alone in a fishing boat rumbled in shadow, you saw only a thousand shades of dark driving you to the red-forests,shelter from the coming rain. I wanted you to join me in the amber water. But you never lookedmy way. Had you seen the hills of snow […]
- [Slowly Through the Middle-Distance](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/slowly-through-the-middle-distance/): Paramedics and scrub nurses are at this very moment lifting excised organs from donors on the thirteen surgery floors of this hospital, soon to be placed in coolers for steeping in an amniotic slush that will help preserve them for the long road trip. On a lower level, the basement carpark of the hospital, a sleep-wary woman has arrived before anybody else and she lights a cigarette. She leans against a pillar opposite the elevators where those nurses and paramedics will soon come streaming out with coolers in tow. She settles into looking unavailable and occupied. It isn’t necessary to […]
- [Satellite Pirates](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/satellite-pirates/): Rene Dardene, the COO of Rejenerate, Inc., heard a helicopter land on the roof above him. A successful meeting with his department heads was ending. Profits were up and work on the sky crane was going forward. I hope the next appointment would go half as well, he thought. I have my doubts. Andrew Campbell, Head of Operations, remained with him as requested. The two men left the conference room for Dardene’s office. A few minutes later, Dardene’s clerk announced his visitors. Dr. Marielle Vos, of the European Space Agency and Brigadier General Gregory Holhauer, of the US Space Force, […]
- [Glass Kernels](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/glass-kernels/)
- [Unhinged](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/unhinged/): Victor FrankensteinAre you playing God again?You fool you’ve got the wrong bodyI’m telling you this cadaver is of no useTrust meI know I lay upon the white tableIn dissected fashionSaturated in guiltI remember my loveShe’s beautiful to meI want to call her name All days greyAll days medical yellowAll days blueI look dull in this pastel hue Here comes the sawSkull-cap buzzingDon’t take my brain awayYou don’t need itI’m unhinged on this marbleI’m disturbed If you put that inside someone elseThey’ll be just like meAnd you wouldn’t want thatWould you? Take this stardust heartIt must have some useFor it holds […]
- [Mask of the Heart](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/261/): …in emptiness no form, no feelings,perceptions, impulses, consciousness.No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch,no object of mind; no realm of eyesand so forth until no realm of consciousness. From the Heart Sutra A knock came to the heavy steel door, loud and insistent. She stopped in her tracks toward the bedroom. She was not expecting anyone, especially at this time of night. Her eyes shifted back and forth, as if she was groping for a forgotten invitation, appointment, nosey neighbour. Nothing. Her hands trembled. Ayako Fukunaga’s […]
- [A Walk in the Park](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/a-walk-in-the-park/): Yonanna Kim opened her lunchbox. Oh god, shrimp pancakes again. Why hadn’t she checked before grabbing the doshirak from the Korean deli on the corner of her apartment block? Why was it always shrimp pancakes? Oh well, nothing to be done now. She put the box down beside her on the park bench. Just my luck, she thought. Why am I so bloody careless? All around her, in the little park next to Merdeka Close, kids were playing in the sun, while the smart set of KL City were jogging, lounging or walking their dogs. The stately, ancient trees spread […]
- [Terraforming Mangal sector Z1x3E](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/terraforming-mangal-sector-z1x3e/)
- [Tales of Blood & Others](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/tales-of-blood-others/): Lovely Bones lovely bones of broken hills,calloused hands and candles of grim,blurry smokes and voices of thrill:come hither;for I wish to kill. Tales of Blood Scintillating falls of crooning golddelving in jars of dissipated cold:rest my soul in tales of blood,Before the angels char my name. Dear December Pink Blossoms dancing along with the wind,purple skies following hollow footprints.Clogged blood flowing down the drain;dear December, I heard you killed again?
- [Post-Graduation](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/post-graduation/): We returned to town toStir things up,Play with the creaturesThat would chase us about. We’d have our time with themKnowing we’d be safe just past the city limits.They were unable to leave, andThey knew this. They adhered to their law of fear.Hell, they were just as afraid of us,If not more, forThey had faces just like oursAnd they couldn’t stand to seeUs like that. We were despair to them. We eventually stopped going backBecause we grew up, got married, gotNew jobs, had children, butWe thought about what would have happenedIf we kept returning. It made our stoic faces carve foreign […]
- [Off the Wall](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/off-the-wall/): You’d never catch me hanging in a place like this before, smelling of old beer and old men. It was all the bad publicity, it alienated the Collectors. You should have known me when I was on top of the game. Morphing was still new and few artists had mastered it. Not everyone could handle the drugs that would transform you into a piece of art a Collector would be proud to hang on the wall. We were a small group, known to the gallery owners and dealers, and cultivated, like rare hothouse flowers. There were parties loaded with the best […]
- [Pickled Lotus](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/pickled-lotus/): The main distinction between animals and humans, for Richter at least, is the uncanny psychic ability to embrace death. This is not to say a dying dog knows it is dying and that its crawling under the porch is a random event, but humans know about death. In a perfect world, for a perfect life, they know their slow engagement with the reaper and welcome it. It is this distinction the S.S. Lotus brings to Richter’s mind as they approach what once could have been a green and purple hull but has since been eroded with time and the heat […]
- [The Left Behind](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-left-behind/): Lea wasn’t sure when she started to feel different, but probably it was in London, during one of the conference dinners, to which she was invited with other university guests, all coming from language departments. She found herself sitting in a corner with only one person sitting next to her, a Chinese man, who quickly finished his meal and left. After that, she could move one place and sit next to a French woman, but she was immersed in a conversation with her countryman, to whom she showed something on her mobile phone. Lea didn’t want to intrude and the […]
- [The Marriott Man](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-marriott-man/): Church lathered the Marriott man’s cysts and sores with poultice using a tongue compressor, a ritual that took more and more time as the weeks wore into months. If the man was dying, he was in no hurry to do so. Church tied a bandana over his mouth and nose and dumped the man’s bedpan into the tub of the hotel bathroom. The pan’s ecosystem had rubbed the porcelain raw and sent scaly growths climbing the lip of the tub, turning the curtains moth-brown. “I’ll be back in an hour,” Church told the Marriott man. “Chapter seven tonight.” He ruffled […]
- [Twenty Kilometres from Heavenly](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/twenty-kilometres-from-heavenly/): A backpacker’s life is no cinch. There were times when he thought it to be absolute drudgery – while feasting on a luncheon of barbecued critters in a Vietnamese backwater or being stranded in a Moroccan hamlet with not a word of the local tongue to call home. There were times when he swore he would never again do it, never again venture outside his north Dublin housing estate. Times like now, when he sat weary, tired. Weary and tired and sweating, on a three-legged stool in a putrid log cabin surrounded by three boorish men in a village of […]
- [Unearthly Pyramids](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/unearthly-pyramids/)
- [Fully Franked & Others](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/fully-franked-others/): Fully Franked she knewwe were flawed our insistence& our rushto arriveto be presentnearby& unabashed    lift the tenor explain the gravityor change the chemistryfor modern loveintuitively learned& reworked to romanceour belonging she knewMary Shelleyshe knew Mary Oliver toowho relearned herselfin nature’s garden the patchwork quiltreadied for the deep chill. Subsequent Harmonies he’s different,unmarried & early future,where they’re all single,educated, highly literate technologically& fascinated by the plausibilityof that silicon beauty,those automated responses &,total subservience he wondersshould he intervene,bring her to life, define her& be her championbecause he loves her sensual statistics& that impending deference,to him & only him her manual will be his […]
- [Speciating & Others](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/speciating-others/): Speciating There are still sapiens on Earth. Often do we remember and feel more than proud that only we Godlings exist – the most sophisticated & most exquisite human-robot compounds. It is true that occasionally we cannot help recalling one or two of them, like Shakespeare & Einstein, but that’s when they pop up unexpectedly from the back of a chip as a couple of forgotten algorithms. Their story tells them they are much more developed physically & intellectually than chimpanzees, while in reality the latter is at least spiritually far more respectable. Since sapiens have proven good for nothing […]
- [Father is Hungry](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/father-is-hungry/): Darkness growls around her,as she perches on a low stoolin our desolate kitchen;Sudden snaps of the hibiscusIn a flagrant display.Hollow vessels litter the floor,rocked by the evening wind. He flounces in snarlingLike a boiling kettle,Eyes bloodshot, teeth grimacing,With a lashed-out tongue.Explosive cracks of breaking feetStunned the stool under her.Father sags on the floorLike a bag emptied of onions, Where is the food?Echoes in the darkness,A sing-along, endless memoryWritten on tablets of blood,Like desecrated monuments,Like the wooing of the wind,In a stormy night.She falls off the stool,Blinded by love. My head shot through the window,Guilt straddling my face, my heart,Telling me […]
- [A Daymare](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/a-daymare/): I The body – it’s batteredThe soul – it’s shatteredThe heart – it’s achingThe pain – it’s rising The eyes are closedCan’t face the lightThe crowd is jeeringEnjoying the sight Standing condemnedBefore the worldWaiting to payFor all the crimesAnd all the sinsThat I have committedMight have committedCould have committedWould have committedShould have committed The judgment is outGuilty as chargedFor all the things that IShould not have doneMight not have doneCould not have doneHave not done, we willKill the devil.Kill the devilKill the devilKill the devil now II Why are you so nice and good?Why am I so bad?Why are you […]
- [Back in the Time Circus](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/back-in-the-time-circus/): I got depressed and started eating metal after Jenny Switzer told me it was gonna make me stronger, better able to withstand the modern world. Starting with several little curls of metallic wire we found by the side of the road. I think they were the bristles from a thrown out electric hairbrush that had been dragged alongside the road by its plug by some wild kids in a truck one night, which was the custom back then. Kids out there were wild and hard-bitten. They hated combing their hair, and never trusted outsiders. We walked along beside the road […]
- [The Bucket Fountain](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-bucket-fountain/): In what can only be optimistically labeled a mistake, Evan’s ashes ended up being scattered in a bucket fountain in Wellington, New Zealand. Though Evan spent the next ten months attempting to discern exactly how such a mistake had been made (his remains should have been shipped back to his native Michigan), there was no avoiding the fact Evan’s spirit was now trapped along a busy road called Cuba Street. It took him around a month to understand he was dead, and another few months to understand that he was not in heaven; he hadn’t even left Earth yet. He […]
- [The Machine](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-machine/): Brice was sure about his calculations. So sure that he told me that when he had worked out the last part of the theory, he almost hugged himself. Brice had started out trying to develop a time camera, as he thought it possible that images from the past could be still around us. That if one stood in the city centre, for example, then the images from everything that had happened there would still be around. All he had to do was invent a camera for seeing these images. It would make him a fortune. Imagine, he said, being able […]
- [The Plat-Eye Tale](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/the-plat-eye-tale/): I got no parents in the ordinary way of things. I envy some that do. I was here before the root doctors come on the earth, shadowing the waters in the marshes, bayous. My parents the swamps, rice marsh, verdant mossy places breathing sure as I do with my own lungs when I squat on my appointed rounds. I come from the breath and curse of root doctors before they had New World names to call the curse. Root doctors think they come first but I was here, waiting on them to feed me air. Root doctors think they appoint […]
- [Solomon's Birth](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/solomons-birth/): Back in the old times, when everyone still lived on Earth, the pain of birth was a curse uttered by some god. Now, god and curse are almost forgotten. Elders, when they remember occasionally, chuckle about it, the way you would smile at a two-year-old’s tantrum. How silly and ignorant of the world’s ways! The Elpis is ready, ready for the birth of a new child. It doesn’t happen that often, and this one is special, perhaps more for the ship than for its people. They don’t know; just as they’re in the dark about the ship’s true nature, they’re […]
- [Fastwell Blend](https://stateofmatter.in/fiction/fastwell-blend/): Things look different at night. Shadows and shadows within shadows. Valerie closed her ancient HP laptop, hearing again the little footsteps sneaking by her closed bedroom door. The slight whisper, the sigh of a language, clicks and hisses. They walked through the small house, sliding along the bottom of the walls. This house, once belonging to Valerie’s long-dead grandparents, seemed infested with strange nocturnal creatures other than the usual mice. Her Aunt Florence had the upkeep and care of the old place, and no one was allowed to forget that. She put her feet carefully on the floor, stood, but […]
- [Birth in Zen](https://stateofmatter.in/artwork/birth-in-zen/)
- [Web](https://stateofmatter.in/poetry/web/): Grabbing the cast iron doorknob in one gloved hand,I edge the ancient wooden door open a crack, thenPull it wide. It opens without a sound, on well-oiledHinges. Not knowing at all what to expect, IStand stunned on the threshold of the old, small out-Building. There I behold in the depths of the roomSuch a spectacular array of spider webs as I haveEver seen. It is an exquisite, minutely detailed architecturalPhenomenon, an enlacement of circles andSpirals and loops and swirling threads of gossamer thatTruly boggle the mind. But there are no spiders.Was the fantastic web dormant, inert, abandoned andNo longer utilized […]

## Pages

- [Submission Styleguide](https://stateofmatter.in/submission-styleguide/): Is this your first time submitting to us? Do you like making your draft perfect-er? Here is a (hopefully) simple styleguide that we follow. Cover Letter Keep your cover letter simple. Dos: Don’ts: Here is an example: Dear Ayush, Please find “My Speculative Fiction” (~3600 words, slipstream, weird). It is previously unpublished but has been simultaneously submitted to other markets. Aryan is a Bangalore-based writer who has been previously published in Magazine X, Magazine Y and Z, an upcoming anthology. These days, he spends his time thinking about time travel. BestAryan Manuscript We will get back to you on all […]
- [“Folk Tales” / “Faux Trails” / “Fox Tails”](https://stateofmatter.in/folk-tales-faux-trails-fox-tails/): Introduction For our upcoming 20th issue (2026 Q1), we are doing something different. We are searching for three faux-tales: one science fiction, one fantasy, one horror. These folk-tails might emerge from any culture, any history, any landscape, but they should inform South Asian experiences. They should give us pause as readers from the subcontinent, as fox tales often do, and make us think about our specific place within the cosmos. The Folk Trail We are openly commissioning three folk trails for CAD150 each (~INR 9,500 as on August 31, 2025). These tales should have: We are quite biased towards unpublished […]
- [Team](https://stateofmatter.in/team/): Current Members Ankit Founder | Publisher, Backend (Jul ’21–) Ankit dabbles in a bit of many things, from fantasy fiction, graphic novels, games, manga. He has an allergy towards YA content, which seems to have no cure. He has recently discovered Le Guin, and is mesmerized. He is actively building a gaming startup and co-writing a novel. Ayush Founder | Editor (Jul ’21–) Ayush is a writer of low-key romances and slice-of-life fiction. A theorist at heart, he can often be spotted at conventional nooks of isolation around the city—atop library shelves and behind coffee spoons. He is opinionated about […]
- [Past Issues](https://stateofmatter.in/past-issues/): Issue 4 Issue 5 Issue 6 Issue 7 Issue 1 Issue 2 Issue 3
- [Submissions](https://stateofmatter.in/submissions/): Guidelines We are looking for Speculative Fiction stories and poetry, which is a broadly defined category and includes Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Obscure and other slipstream genres. While sexual themes are not frowned upon, kindly refrain from sending us hard erotica or gore. General Fiction Poetry Translations Submissions Form
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