Short Fiction & Poetry
To learn more about anthologies mentioned here, head over to the anthologies page for blurbs, retail links, and more!
Pieces marked with an asterisk (*) are available online to read for free.
Short Fiction
Blue Wood, Ash Crown (2500 words, fantasy). Upcoming in Fraidy Cat Quarterly Volume 7: Rage (Fraidy Cat Press)
Feminist rage / fairytale archetypes turned into revenge / ancient artifacts
Upcoming!
Imperfect Monsters (2000 words, dark fantasy). Upcoming in Into the Dark (All Worlds Wayfarer)
The machinations of stars / multiple perspectives / second person / monsters throughout the ages
Upcoming!
Blood Stains True (3300 words, dark fantasy). Published in Vampire Hunters: An Incomplete Record of Personal Accounts (Speculation Publications), July 22 2025.
Historical fantasy / 1500s Venice / trans protagonist
I write now, however, not with concerns that a vampire walks beside me, but with a pressing mythological question—an academic curiosity, you might say. This entire affair has been most unusual, and so I shall start with its beginning, as is usually best for any matter where one pursues the truth.
A Knot for the Hawk (3000 words, fantasy). Published in Loki (Flame Tree Press), June 8 2025 (UK)/July 22 2025 (US)
Trickery in Asgard / snarky outlook / even gods can be genderfluid
The problem with godly jokes, the ironic reason that perhaps made me such a trickster to begin with, is that they are very difficult to undo.
To Catch A Name (3900 words, fantasy). Published in Morgana le Fay anthology (Flame Tree Press), March 31 2025 (UK)/April 15, 2025 (US).
Trans take on Morgana's mythos / choosing (or finding) your name
I cobble him together, that imagined nighttime boy, out of hawthorn boughs and apple blossoms and the gentle, thumping rhythm of my own heartbeat.
Then I hide him in my garden.
The Science of Transient Cartography (2100 words, science fiction). Published in The Daily Tomorrow, February 2025.
Note: Available to subscribers only.
Solarpunk future / maps and mapmaking / the place of art in an ever-changing world
My pa likes to say, his curmudgeonly jaw working at the spoon he often inserts between his lips when he’s trying to suck the last vestiges of honey from the well-worn metal ornamentation, that when he was a boy, maps were static things, only changing when wars were fought and lost and won.
I usually like to remind him that we don’t have wars anymore.
Poetry
Whittled and Burned (16 lines, dark fantasy). Upcoming in Trollbreath magazine.
Upcoming!
SOLD: One Soul, Gently Used (60 lines, dark fantasy). Upcoming in Haven Speculative.
Upcoming!
* To the Swallow's Final Hatchling (41 lines, fantasy/fairytale). Published in Orion's Belt, August 2025 issue.
Save you your wings, little daughter,
and one day,
save your daughter's wings, too.
* What the Birds Taught Me (16 lines, speculative fiction/solarpunk). Published in Heartlines Spec Issue 8, July 31 2025.
I learned gentleness from beneath a vulture’s wing,
my cotton pad daubing at blood and scratches
left by a fox’s enterprising claws.
* Eagle-Eyed (46 lines, slipstream/fantasy). Published in Eye to the Telescope Issue 57: Birds.
The doctors had no explanation
for the bird’s eyes set into
my flawed and human head.
Beauty's Captor (34 lines, fantasy). Published in Star*Line Issue 48.3 (Summer 2025)
Note: Available to subscribers only.
Sleeping Beauty reimagined from the point of view of the vines
Bait (24 lines, dark fantasy). Published in Black Cat Tales (Black Cat Publishing), June 13 2025.
They don't realize
they're the bait.
*
To Be the Change (43 lines, fantasy). Published in Strange Horizons, March 10 2025.
Reviewed by Charles Payseur in
Locus Magazine #773 as "a piece that challenges those who believe their power and corruption to be eternal,
recognizing that no amount of power or control can prevent people from knowing and following their hearts
and being themselves. Nocito does a beautiful job bringing the prophecy, and its fulfillment, to vivid life."
My father’s least favorite prophecy
has been reviewed by five generations of scholars
and soundly dismissed by them all.
When the heir becomes a daughter …
them // us (46 lines, science fiction). Published in Utopia Science Fiction, March 2025.
Note: Available to subscribers only.
They
drop from the sky at moonrise
when silver beams twist around their silver capsule.
Gretel (111 lines, dark fantasy). Published in Grimm Retold (Speculation Publications), September 24 2025.
2025 Rhysling Award nominee!
The next day, when she opens her oven to bake
another loaf of bread, Hansel pushes her in.
Flash Fiction
* Through Time and Calamity (750 words, science fiction). Published in Starship Librarians (Tyche Publishing).
Librarians of the future / queer protagonist / solving the unsolvable
Speak (1000 words, science fiction). Upcoming in Utopia Science Fiction.
Trans sci-fi / debate competitions / AI as a metaphor
* A Single Song (750 words, dark fantasy). Published in Factor Four Magazine Issue 48 (July 2025).
A harp made of bones, they say, will only ever play a single song.
An Unexpected Wombat (500 words, fantasy). Published in Worlds of Possibility, June 2025.
Described by editor Julia Rios as a story that "shows us another kind of coming of age vision
as a trans person finds hope and comfort amidst inner chaos."
Note: Currently free to read for subscribers only.
I hold absolutely still, motionlessness morphing into illusion. When I finally stir, I become my mind’s self, standing knee-deep in snowflakes containing my memories.
Microfiction
Don't Hide From the Mirror (100 words, dark fantasy). Upcoming in Apex Magazine Issue 151 (winner of The Masks We Wear drabble contest).
Upcoming in October 2025!
To Err is Human (100 words, sci-fi horror). Published in Anomaly. Free to read online for all subscribers (including free)!
Vita has not completed its mission.
* A Collector of Lives (100 words, fantasy). Published in A Coup of Owls: Summer 2025 issue.
A phoenix seeks to collect additional lives to avoid reincarnation.
* Window to the Lost (100 words, dark fantasy). Published in Trembling with Fear (Horror Tree), February 9 2025.
Grey mist wreaths my eyes. I swat it away and angle my flashlight to illuminate the sharp glimmer that snagged my attention.
* after the apple (100 words, fantasy/fairytale). Published in Holly & Broom (Iron Faerie Publishing), October 2024.
Apple blossoms flutter to the earth around her, and she spins, letting them settle on her dark hair like flakes of sugar, or cocoanut, or snow.
* You Must Not Dare to Free the Breeze (100 words, fantasy). Published in Holly & Broom (Iron Faerie Publishing), January 2025.
Wind billows from the organ’s pipes, a billowing maelstrom loosed from within the polished valves, and in seconds it rips through the cobweb-spun church.
* Physics and Fairy Dust (100 words, fantasy). Published in Holly & Broom (Iron Faerie Publishing), December 2024.
The train can’t make me human—no wicked sorcery could alter me so fundamentally—but it reminds me that humanity is something to be striven for.