Mahaila Smith avatar

    Mahaila Smith

    Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag (thesprawlmag.ca). Their recent chapbooks include, Water-Kin (2024) and Enter the Hyperreal (2024). Seed Beetle is forthcoming with Stelliform Press in spring 2025.
    Ottawa, Canada

    Chapbooks

    Selected work (52 publications)

    Dreams & Nightmares, 2025
    Little red
    speculative
    poetry
    Fairy Tale
    Dangerous to Go Alone 2, 2025
    Zoom-Era Stardew Valley Love Poem
    speculative
    poetry
    reprint
    Stasis anthology - Bell Press, 2024
    A Side of Spinach
    Short Story
    scifi
    Anstruther Press, 2024
    The Anstruther Reader: Sappho, Let Go, & Flick Off!The Anstruther Reader is an anthology compiling ten years worth of limited edition chapbooks and broadsides, including poems from my chapbook, Claw Machine.
    poetry
    Augur Magazine, 2024
    Earthseed: The Book of Life, a Cento
    speculative
    poetry
    cento
    DOG TEETH Mag, 2024
    How would you like to be perceived?How would you like to be drawn? The body artist asks. She sits under a shower of mist. Her blue-green scaled body catches sunlight from the watery window. There are sketches of beings on the walls and her tables.
    speculative
    poetry
    Polar Borealis Magazine, 2024
    The Mindworm is SpreadingThe sun tries to touch the soil, burning through tarmac and asphalt to reach cold earth underneath. The roads crack and sink. Sparrow wings sit discarded in ditches. I do not need to consume continually, it is more a craving turned habit.
    speculative
    poetry
    above/ground press, 2024
    Put on your shoes or else you need to leaveStilted bones for your birthday are an expected guest present in the evening decanter poured between me, the mist and my sister. Sparrows are my confidantes. Butterflies are my enemies. My sister is alright, she isn’t a butterfly.
    absurd
    poetry
    surrealism
    abstract
    Angry Gable Press, 2024
    FabBooth
    flash
    speculative
    untethered magazine, 2024
    I vowed to be of service to other beingsOn a productive day I get out my fountain pen and paper and stand outside, in the rain, letting wet smear You can’t read this.
    poetry
    ekphrastic
    Polar Starlight, 2024
    Family TreeNebby peeled back the layers of her grandmother’s Holo account. She tried to piece together the girl her grandma had been. Opening the earliest part of the catalogue.
    speculative
    poetry
    Polar Starlight, 2024
    Our Time and SpaceWe live, we make, we work in interconnected stratigraphies.
    The Future Fire, 2024
    Manipulating the LightThe open skylights lance drops of sunlight that slip through prisms and bounce off mirrors, leaving a spill of colour and light
    speculative
    Querencia, 2024
    ObjectifiedArt from 55 contributors from the women & lgbtqiap+ communities- all sales from this volume will be donated to Crossroads for Women
    speculative
    Room, 2024
    Our honeymoon to the stars
    speculative
    Decapitate, 2024
    Chemical Rebalance for Young Cyborg HousewivesThe woman stares at the pillbox of pearls beside her bed. She takes it in her hand, shakes out a few into her palm then strings a necklace. She clasps it behind her neck.
    speculative
    reprint
    Bywords, 2024
    Ugly, Red: A CentoNow we find each other turned by urban obstacles. With disbelief I touch the cold marble, time for the tram, time for the conductress, time for the policeman. When I banged my head on the door, I screamed, instead of painting volcanoes.
    cento
    Dreams & Nightmares, 2024
    Squishing AntsPulling up backyard violets & dandelions baby birds gossip and scream, sitting beside one another. They make their wobbly way up the branches: shaky landing strips. Warm air cools to night. I skateboard with my friends on a bike path home.
    speculative
    Star*Line, 2024
    [Light glances off]Light glances off the geodesic dome. Inside: a cool, green reprieve against the dry, cracked desert. Our community survives.
    speculative
    tanka
    Dreams & Nightmares, 2023
    Insomniac
    Star*Line, 2023
    FoamingSeed beetles swarm behind the landscaping androids pushing together, closely, stabbing fresh wells and building stepped terraces in the fractured ground.
    Nightingale & Sparrow Literary Magazine, 2023
    WildfireAll of your objects will outlive you. Here they are: haunting your line of sight. So set them aflame. As in: The whole world will outlive you As in: You are a dying god. As in: Welcome to Ragnarök, welcome to the burning of the world.
    Poetry Pause, 2023
    Offerings to Save the WorldI stand on the mountains of strawberry fields that lace my muscles with veins of red and gold water and sun and earth. I stand at the edge of an oceanic ravine. Even at the lowest depths, marine animals find a reason to put the lights on.
    ekphrastic
    Star*Line, 2023
    Hi! I am your Cortical Update!I have been anthropomorphized into a pixelated alien, a shifty piece of verbal software, learning and unlearning itself. I mold to the contours of your pen, your mouse. I am a linguistic virus embedded in the soft space between tongue and inner ear.
    Star*Line, 2023
    Standardized Education
    Nightingale and Sparrow, 2023
    sweet
    Spiritus Mundi, 2023
    Young Hestia
    Soft Star Magazine, 2023
    Daily Routine
    Radon Journal, 2023
    Chemical Rebalance for Young Cyborg Housewives
    speculative
    Fiddles & Scribbles, 2023
    LiFE
    speculative
    The Ekphrastic Review, 2023
    Haze
    ekphrastic
    Star*Line, 2023
    Remodeled
    speculative
    Echolocation Magazine, 2023
    This is my favourite game
    speculative
    365tomorrows, 2023
    Atmosphere of LoveThe casting call was very specific. No bodymods, no one over 6 ft. No medical conditions. She taped her audition in an office tech supply store in front of a tall, tubular black camera-droid. She introduced herself, Jordan Wreath, age 24...
    speculative
    Soft Star Magazine, 2023
    Some Troubles with Wormholes
    speculative
    365tomorrows, 2023
    Bunny at Club C0de“What is this stuff,” Bunny asked the spiky lipped girl offering her the small bag. “AdBlok,” she said, putting some powder in her mouth. Bunny tipped some powder into her mouth. Her face weighed into her head and her vision blurred, turned purple.
    speculative
    Bell Press Books, 2022
    You’re Invited to my Birthday Party!
    pantoum
    Bywords, 2023
    Dec 6 Vigil for the Women at Minto Park
    Midnight Sun Magazine, 2022
    Making Up
    speculative
    Long Con Magazine, 2022
    We sit together, the days of myselves & Bureaucratic
    ekphrasis
    Star*Line, 2023
    Down or Up
    speculative
    Moon Cola, 2022
    In the Dark
    speculative
    Arc Poetry, 2022
    Offerings to Save the World
    ekphrasis
    Ribbons, 2022
    Untitled Tanka
    tanka
    DUSIE, 2020
    Sea-sick
    Decameron Writing Series, 2021
    Decameron Writing Series, Cycle 5
    The Trinity Review, 2021
    Zoom-Era Stardew Valley Love Poem
    Acta Victoriana, 2020
    Flick Off!
    The Trinity Review, 2020
    school trip
    speculative
    Pride Compilation, 2021
    Who Erased My Bisexuality? I Just Want to Talk
    UC Review, 2020
    Do I Know You?
    Arbor Room Magazine, 2021
    The Summer I Visited my Aunt and was Cursed

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