“The King was pregnant.” This issue of the Eye to the Telescope seeks speculative poems that explore or respond to gender in nontraditional ways. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969, Gethenians are asexual except when they are in kemmer. Then pheromonal interaction causes them to develop male or female genitalia. In Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, 1976, men breast feed babies. In Geoff Ryman’s “Birth Days,” 2003, reproductive technology has advanced so that men can give birth. In Nancy Jane Moore’s The Weave, 2016, hermaphrodite aliens can choose which partner will give birth and which will nurse the child in a pouch until it is weaned. For this issue, poems can be set anywhere in time and space in this universe or in another. Magic may or may not be possible. Any form or style is acceptable, although gross horror is unwelcome.

Guest Editor Sandra J. Lindow remarked "I am not looking for women with swords or men with flower beds as much as I am looking for the songs and narrative poems that reflect non binary possibilities."

The Deadline is September 15, 2017. The issue will appear on October 15, 2017. For full details: http://eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html