2017


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Strange Horizons (August 7th, 2017) - Bird House
Quiscalus quiscula
Mind the grackles on your car, in the driveway here. They love side-view mirrors where they stare into their own button eyes. Hear them laugh? They cherish the bouncing sound of their own voices like sand passing through glass—the scrape of crystal in their gullets...
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Eye to the Telescope (Issue 25: July 2017, Theme: Garbage) - Dear Shotgun City
​Mithila Review (Issue 8) - My City of Ruin in The Santa Monica Prophecies: A Collaborative Triptych

​The idea for this triptych of poems was conceived when Layla, Holly, and Bonnie spent an evening at Santa Monica Pier in LA, where they had their futures foretold by a fortune-telling machine. Each writer’s poem is directly inspired by her fortune, borrowing words, phrases, and themes.​

Reviewed at Quick Sip Reviews.
Mithila Review (Issue 8) - Two Visual Poems - Lunar Girl Drinks Poetry from the Stars & Reflection 
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Listen to recordings of my poems from this issue: 
Purchase this issue on Amazon:
By & By Poetry (Issue 7) - Grayslick

My holy skin is stainless
stretched over my hands
open to her fresh seabed air.
Abyss & Apex (Issue 62: 2nd Quarter 2017) - Spring Will Come Again

​What part of themselves did these souls, these ghost riders, misplace?
What plane did they transgress? What crime did they commit
binding them to the darkness, to the death trees,
where twin hearts await, eager to blossom once more?
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"Gibson House" by Bert Cash
Liminality (Issue #11: Spring 2017) - Pine Song, Robin Song, Star Song

When men came to cut me down I lingered over the stump,
marveling at the many rings of myself.
I never knew so much was hidden inside me.
Crab Fat Magazine (March 2017) - Of Whales in Paint and Other Poems

​The Fem (1/11/17) - Lolita and City Visible (Erasures of Nabokov and Rushdie)
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Unlost Journal (Issue 8, Jan. 8, 2017) - Man, Erased (An Erasure of Pessoa)
Man is conviction ridiculous.
Whenever ridiculous annihilates him
the superior man enjoys superiority perfect.

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Kaleidotrope, (Winter 2017) - Ship of Jinn
My skin boils beneath ice/ milk and cream curdling/ uncoiling, it asks/ not for forgiveness./Close in the dark/ their breath is victim/ to the night

2016

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2016 Awards Eligibility for poems
Ghost Proposal, Dec. 2016 - Loomings
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A sample of the project Eastext by Pablo Gimenez-Zapiola featuring my poem, "Without People."
Eastext (October 2016) - Without People & Out of the Labyrinth
​Read more at Arts & Culture Texas
​Read more at Free Press Houston
Read an excerpt of my poetry at Literal Magazine
Eye to the Telescope (Issue 22: October 2016, Theme: Ghosts) - Hart Island
Read Editor Shannon Connor Winward's thoughts on picking poems for this issue,
​which includes a lovely write-up of my work here.
​Reviewed in Spectral Realms No. 6 
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Star*Line (Issue 39.4: Fall 2016) - Cetecean Prosthesis
This new piece of myself devours my flesh, / merges human and beast, / and I dream of underwater shelves, /biotic deserts, abyssal plains, / and the taste of krill.
Liminality Magazine (Issue 9: Autumn 2016) - For Lonnie
​*Nominated for the 2016 SFPA Rhysling Award*
But he goes all quiet. His ghost eyes roll / up in his head, white-on-white-on-white, / and he runs his shaking hands over his scars, / looks up like he’s going to wish on a / star.
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Issue 9 cover art by by Caitlyn Kurilich
Literary Orphans (Issue 26: Shirley) - Peony Red, artwork by Kaia Pieters
​If she were to touch that bending /
head – peony red – oh what then?
Sixfold Journal (Summer 2016) - A Tourist of Sorts and Other Poems
I take up ashes / like taking up space. / I am dis-embodying my body / or what I once called skin, / its remnants rounding out, / the insides of a blue funeral urn / whose curves make sense.
Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry (June 2016) - Night Raven
"She places her small hands over my eyes / and whispers, chants, dissolves."

Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry (May 2016) - Woven
"I defined myself / by the work of my hands; / like bands of time, / we are woven together."
Abyss & Apex (Issue 58: 2nd Quarter 2016) - Revolution
​​*Nominated for the 2016 SFPA Rhysling Award*
"I have lived before, / I whisper to the rain / to the fields / to the sea of dead men."
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Penumbra, 2016 - "Bearing the Light" 
Page & Spine Online (March 11, 2016) - "Sheaves of Wheat," and "Break of Day." 
Van Gogh, in his / infinite torment, / fixated on the grains, / the strands, / the very golden hair / within sheaves of wheat, the circling endless eternity.
Silver Blade Issue 29 (Winter 2016) - "Powder Keg"
​"Where is the promise of my years? / In sleep memory rages, claws / my eyes, sears my nostrils, / hisses in my ears."

2015
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  • Vine Leaves #16 (October 2015) - "A Red Sky." 
  • Our Space: Shorts & Poetry from the Houston Community (2015) "Morning Song." Edited by Writespace staff and volunteers. 

forthcoming
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Apex Publications: Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More (2017) - "Sea Fog" 

Dreams & Nightmares Magazine, Sept 2017 - "The Hearts of Robots"

Space and Time Magazine, 2017 - "The Space Between Us"  

​Strange Horizons - "Bird House" 

Grievous Angel - "Confessions of a Supermassive Black Hole" 

Eye to the Telescope, Garbage Issue - "Shotgun City" 
Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer of poetry, nonfiction, criticism, and speculative (flash) fiction (and other things). In another age, Walrath attended UT Austin (B.A. in English) and DU (M.L.A. in Creative Writing). Her work has appeared in places (above). Walrath is into abstractionism, geekery, self-aggrandizing statements, feminism, dystopia, and cats (among others).