Online Table of Contents

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • The Mummy Child by Elizabeth Barrette
  • The Month of October by Wendy Rathbone
• Full Table of Contents

---

Editor's Choice Poems

"The Mummy Child," by Elizabeth Barrette

It is the hand that haunts me.

It is the dark, dry, withered hand
that clenches around my finger.

It is the fragile, parchment-skinned hand
that paws at my palm.

It is the desperate, hungry, dying hand
that scrabbles after food I do not have.

We were not allowed to share our own food.
Even if it went to waste. Rules, you know.

It is the hand that haunts me, the hand of the child I could not save, and not, oddly, the whole child, though that memory too is perfectly clear.

The little mummy child lay in the hole,
as dessicated as the sand itself,
sharp bones poking at the black skin.
There was no cloth for wrappings.

Each month, the same dream returns: I remember those long weeks in Africa that shriveled the hope in my heart like a seed left in the pitiless desert sun. I remember the hand, so tiny and frail, yet so terribly strong. I hear again the strange creaking cry, like the sound of old leather bending. The flesh has drawn back from the small hard nails, which claw across my belly and leave me bleeding.

It is the hand that haunts me, scooping the life out of me, wringing me out too dry even for tears.

        So no,
        I don't think I'm expecting.
        I have no expectations at all.

---

"The Month of October," by Wendy Rathbone

If there is a god
   it is October
If there is an eternal soul
   mine is the longest dusk
   flared gold
   traveling to the furthest quasar
If there is hope
   it is in the candy-scented night
   where any wonder may be revealed

October sifts the stars
   causing them to glitter
October lights the candle moon
October reminds the mirror to reflect
October causes wind
October is the campfire where
   fortunes are told
October walks the rim of void
October wears patchwork

The language of shadow
wraps up all the witches and apples
and chuckling leaves. No more words
remain to speak of kid-spells
and magic mists, fire-brained pumpkins
and skull moons, clouds stretching like
spider-lace and bare trees birthing dryads,
scarecrows dreaming of Armani suits
and the marble-eyed owl blinking
and the knowledge that the spirit wears
more than human flesh.

The heart rules the muse.
And I say:
My heart is field-fog and ghost chill running
lonely, long and lost with the
rushing wind bound up
in pine and salt and guttering flame,
burnt wax and caramel breath … all spiraling
toward the center of my unseelie
soul.

   There I live
   in the elixirs
   of October.

---

Full Table of Contents

Features

• Quarks & Strings • Marge Simon
• President's Message • Deborah P Kolodji
• Stealth SF • Denise Dumars
• Conference Reports • Deborah P Kolodji
• Knowing Darkness • M. Frost
• Reviews from the Small Press • Anthony Bernstein, G.O. Clark, Edward Cox, Joshua Gage, John Garrison

Poetry

• Humming the Human Ability to Adjust • Steve Sneyd
• Grave Decoration • G.O. Clark
• Expiration Date • Helen Ehrlich
• Changeling • Francis W. Alexander
• Three Haiku • Karen L. Newman
• A Barbershop in Hell • John Tumlin
• untitled • assu
• untitled • Deborah P Kolodji
• Vamipres and Other Unwelcome Guests • Brian Rosenberger
• The River Girl • Phillip A. Ellis
• Fairy • Rhonda Parrish
• untitled • assu
• The Mummy Child • Elizabeth Barrette
• The Month of October • Wendy Rathbone
• Days of wine and necrophilia • Jaime Lee Moyer
• two haiku • Geoffrey Landis
• two haiku • Greg Schwartz
• Wolfwife • Robert Borski
• Old Ways Are Best • Steve Sneyd
• Midnight • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• Ghazal • Joshua Gage
• Scifaiku • Kurt MacPhearson
• Preparations • Irving
• Bad Squirrel Thoughts • Ann K. Schwader
• Alien Flu • Rhonda Parrish