Online Table of Contents

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • (You Are Here) Multiverse by Gene Van Troyer
  • The Lecture of the Bees by Dennis Braden
  • Postcards from Mars by G. Sutton Breiding
• Full Table of Contents

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Editor's Choice Poems

"(You Are Here) Multiverse," by Gene Van Troyer

There is no single universe and all of them are one.
Now begins the fun. You're here. You're there.
You're everywhere that there can be another you.
Your landscape artist in this play has got you on
the maze run through this multiverse that's you.
He wonders if you're going to smother
in the helter-skelter storm of choices.

The mirrors and windows rattle in their frames of light
for your attention. They are strung like stained glass
pages from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
on the taut striatal lattice of your intranet. You are here,
the electric flash in the nerves that bypass
the warp zone of the waking world. You Are Here,
reads the legend on that map. Which one is you?

Does it matter? Your finger is a pointer on a screen.
Click here to choose a linkline in the web. There is not
world enough or time in this cyberland to see the all of you,
but you might glimpse along the forking avenues
a hint of what imbues them all with possibility. The binding.
The tension. The glue. The paths not taken in the garden
whose forking ways are paved in your imagination.

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"The Lecture of the Bees," by Dennis Braden

Once
there was a woman who was born with no breasts.
And though she wanted children more than gold
all the men shunned her.
So she grew to hate them
and thought of ways to gain power over them.
She went to live in the mountain,
taking her hatred with her in the two
empty sacks in her chest.
One sack she filled with wood, the other
she filled with water from the lake
which was both eye and mouth of the mountain.
In the sack of wood she kindled a fire.
When the fire had eaten every branch,
leaving red-hot coals of ash, she poured
water from the other sack and quenched them.

This she did every day for three years
until the sack could hold no more
and she placed the ashes in a mound at her feet.
From the ashes she fashioned a child,
nursing it with water from the lake
and the fire of the mountain.
The sack used for burning was made
into a garment for the child
and from the sack used for water
the woman made sandals for the child's feet.
And one day, the sky divided into equal portions
by the sun, the woman said to the child: Go
to the houses of my birth and teach
what I have learned in the mountain.
So the child went, walking
down the one path from the mountain,
clutching her breasts.

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"Postcards from Mars," by G. Sutton Breiding

Earth you are a fading teardrop
between moon and moon,
the petrified skies I stare at like an idiot,
in dreams of grey rain
whispering around inside helmets,
like quicksand, cleavage, cruel pages,

Earth in a dewdrop, a snowflake, a cricket's eye.
Smell of dark grasses; tangerine.
Something passes through the dawn, shadowlike,
from crack to crack, under days of quartz.

Old autumn shores:
redheads in the sky. O moon and moon,
the light that rattles. What is evening, here?
Delirium of palms, linen, orange moss,
long echo of alabasterness.

Mile and miles out today:
red salt flats, black hermit pillars.
Sounds like wind through pines.
Nothing but ghosts, mica bones, mirage
of porcelain cities.

Haunting observations. The not-birds, the Earth
inside us, bitter coffee,
insect scuttle, the brushing away
of webs, hair, snowbreath,
none of it there.

Relics of lost poets.
Archives of echo, fragments of voice.
Silver lips pressed against helmets.
Poems made of sand, crystal, pubic flesh.
Infinite Mars of her mouth.

Entities hush by, sparkling wet silk.
Images of steam vents, old brick, rooftop watertowers.
Crackles of language. Caressable phrases.
A necklace of ships toward Jupiter.
We watch, frozen, clutching our vials.

Landscape of tanager, oriole, gold cicada.
Look at that city—
the Immortalists died there, ranting and drooling.
Odd sensations. Taste of salt and lemon.
Quiver of buttocks under my tongue.
Cybersirens in digital seas. Red prose,
gazelles of thought, a box of alphabets.

Smell of iron in rain but there is no RAIN.
Flash-winds, flash-memories of whiskey
and ancient orchards: smell of rotting apples
and rust under these lead-pipe skies. Bunkers
of concrete, spaceship detritus. Open lines
on RadioMars.

Remains of movements in the dark, pieces
of afterimage, mirror-deliria, apparition of rivers.
Music, like if cats were glass.
The burlap curtain between dread and panic.
Patience; accidents; unknown footprints.
Our spines split double for each moon,
cold metal in our throats.

Insane robots: cliche of: reality of.
AI myth and lore. Running headfirst into walls
of cinnabar. Virulence of isolation.
Robot/flesh. Othernesses, mysterians, oids.
Braided wires hanging from sounds of powdered rust.
Robot/apocalypse. Clones teleporting
through solid space.
Cliff dwellings full of headcasings.

Sciencefiction. Freight trains.
The titanium scribe bent to its task:
glass quill, spirit lamp, radiation suits,
jetpaks, world of pure breath.
Across these endless sands.
Hangovers in orbit, hangovers on Mars.
Grind insects, hipbones, into inkpowder.
Humanfiction. Sex with ghosts and language.

Distant ululations just at about late afternoon.
Undulations under the sand, red waves
across the paper, peripherals of shadow.
Out into the Arena of Dissolve.
Underground chambers, geode eyes,
something porous in grey holes.

Drama in the Black Dome:
her hair stood 2 feet straight up.
Raving about squirrel skins, Youngstown,
parallel universes. I watched her, drinking
something gold; watched her and thought of her
in panties and hoodie.

Mirages of smokestacks,
medieval angels, snow and weeds. Bridges
thrumming under clack of heels. O rain
on streets, leafless trees, metal awnings.

Dark circles opening beneath us: into
ether pools, vistas of violet photons,
photographs of exploding shuttle euphoria. Who
laments, out there in the dusk?

Cinnamon fills the mouth.
Honeycomb minds blur together.
The sky tunes us far from you, O Earth,
on trips to suns and suns beyond our lifespans.
We are the legend of the red planet.

Discovery: narcotic lichen.
In fields of lark and phoenix. Artefact wreckage.
Catchphrases of prophecy. We chew and sit.
Blue curtains fall into pools of blue sand.
Giant sundew along the marble docks.
Tall dancers like canna flowers swaying.
Snow hissing into braziers where we warm our memories.

Tomorrow will be tomorrow.

Flotsam of empty spacesuits.

These orange beaches.

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Full Table of Contents

Features

• Quarks & Strings • Marge Simon
• President's Message • Deborah P Kolodji
• Stealth SF • Denise Dumars
• Conference Reports • Ruth Berman, Karen A. Romanko
• Poetry News
• Gene David Van Troyer • Bob Frazier
• Eaton Conference Report • Deborah P Kolodji
• Rhysling Award Ceremony Report • Deborah P Kolodji
• Reviews from the Small Press • Anthony Bernstein, Edward Cox, Joshua Gage

Poetry

• Japery • Robert Borski
• Robotics • Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
• Changeling • Wade German
• The Bermuda Triangle • Duane Ackerson
• Ice-Rats • Morgan Bloodaxe
• Vacation Plans • Deborah P Kolodji
• Grandfather Paradox • Francis W. Alexander
• Frame House or Cave Entrance • Peter Layton
• Infomercial Teaser Targeting 98-pound Weaklings, c. 2100 • Kurt MacPhearson
• (You Are Here) Multiverse • Gene Van Troyer
• Even here • assu
• The Lecture of the Bees • Dennis Braden
• Lamp • G. O. Clark
• Nonrenewable Resources • Marsheila Rockwell
• Postcards from Mars • G. Sutton Breiding
• Giza • S.A. Kelly
• Riding Herd • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• The Gardener Returned • Ann K. Schwader
• Cyborg: Evolution • Morgan Bloodaxe
• Safe as Houses • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• Story • Katharyn Howd Machan
• oriental girl dances • Helen Ehrlich
• Endings • Elizabeth Bennefeld
• Godzilla • Geoffrey Landis
• Crack One Open for the Cause • assu