Online Issue Contents

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • The Cemetery by Kurt Newton
  • Twelve Quatrains Channeling Nostradamus by Bruce Boston
  • Ciliate Sestina by Elissa Malcohn
  • First Generation by Meliors Simms

• Full Table of Contents

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Editor's Choice Poems

"The Cemetery," by Kurt Newton

Perhaps it is the stillness
and the quiet
that drew your mother here,
the stillness of rows upon rows
of hundred year old grave stones,
the quiet of the dead.

On sunny days
she packed you in your stroller,
walked the half mile from home
down the narrow country road
to where the stonewall runs
unbroken but for a small
wrought-iron gate.

She strolled inside
and patrolled the grass-grown lanes
between each row of monuments,
stopping here and there
to read a name or inscription,
sometimes speaking the words out loud
as if the stones had voices.

From where you sat
all you saw were
large stone slabs,
some standing straight and square,
some pointed at the top,
some branching in the middle
to form a cross.

Cold grey
and moldy white,
some were black
and smooth as glass;
in these you saw your face
floating by,
and mother's legs
moving beneath her sun dress.

In addition to the soft
echoes of footsteps
that followed mother's shoes,
there came the squeak of the stroller,
the rattling of its wheels,
and your mother singing lullabies
to pass the time,
but there was more.

Sometimes the face reflected
in the stone was not your own,
and the echoes
were more like whispers
calling out your name;
your mother strolled along
as if she didn't notice,
her shadow growing thinner
with each day that passed.

And as you grew—
the stroller left behind for sneakers,
chasing after mother's shadow
as she played peek-a-boo;
the rows of stones a maze,
the grass-draped crypt a picnic place;
waving to the faces and giggling
as their voices tickled your ears—
this place became
a home away from home.

And when your mother died
one bright sunny day,
her pale thin face still as stone,
her ear pressed to the ground
as if hearing for the first time
the voices you always knew were there,
you sat beside her
singing lullabies,
gently brushing back
her brittle hair
with dirt-stained fingers.

A fresh grave soft as peat
became Mother's final resting place,
but she was only sleeping;
the following day
she chased you through the rows of stone
and giggled like the others,
so happy
her feet barely touched the ground.

And though the sound
of a speeding car
still frightens you,
and mother trembles
when she recalls the awful
screeching violence of that
day things changed forever,
there can only be
good memories from now on
here

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"Twelve Quatrains Channeling Nostradamus," by Bruce Boston

A great dark prince rises from the East
scattering his sleeping minions to the stars.
New worlds will be uncovered and flourish
by the precepts of an ancient text.

A message sealed in a long ship of steel
summons fierce invaders from realms afar.
Not words, not weapons, will deter their pillage,
and lands will be plundered over and again.

The reign of the Boar follows the reign of the Fox.
Fires burn from the narrow straits to Gibraltar.
No blade green or worthy branch will flourish
from the debris and ashes of unnamed graves.

Men of knowledge will turn the key of life
so blood of man mingles with beast and fowl.
Strange new species inhabit fertile lands,
their hybrid king acclaimed as a new Messiah.

Unseen vermin infest a once great nation
and plague winds carry disease far and near.
Cities will darken and fields lie barren.
Tomorrow's children must uncover the past.

Those of metal limb and metal countenance,
their minds aflame with flashes of light,
will rule an aged and acclaimed metropolis,
soon inhabited by none but their own.

She who survives a passage through darkness
offers learned counsel to a beleaguered lord.
The moon and stars will hold back the night
until a wise man welcomes the rising sun.

Noxious vapors foul the breath of life.
Polluted waters flood coastal lands.
Forced migrations, arms raised in anger.
All nations will know the devastation.

The greening of a sister world completed.
Distant colonies rebel against their masters.
Ships of war are launched for the long journey.
Profit to be gained after a just peace.

The rays of the sun shall be empowered
and wind will illuminate the night.
The downcast will wear robes of plenty
when land and sea are stripped of poison.

Immortality flows from an amber vial.
The night is shorn of its darkness.
The shadow of death shall not be reborn
except through lost fortune or acts of war.

When the hands of the clock are reversed,
history will be unraveled and sewn again.
All prophecy realized in eternal variation,
each variation a universe unto itself.

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"Ciliate Sestina," by Elissa Malcohn

"In ciliate sex, two individuals arrive, and two individuals leave: no eggs are fertilized, no offspring are produced. But by the time the two individuals go their separate ways, a massive change will have come over both of them: they will both have acquired a new genetic identity."
      —Olivia Judson, "Unorthodox," The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2010.

Across a crowded pool, you spot your love,
Each eyelash wriggling with temptation's glance,
From top to bottom, side to side. Within,
Your micronucleus proclaims, "I am!"
Identity for sharing in the heat
Of passion fit for thirty thousand genes.

One hundred sexes revel in those genes,
A Kama Sutra praising one-celled love.
Perhaps you mate within the torrid heat
Of cockroach gut—or frolic in the glance
Of iced Antarctic denizens. "I am!"
Your mate insists, becoming you within.

Your micronuclei exchange within,
The gift of wearing one another's genes,
Together and identical: "I am!"
A Tweedledum and Tweedledee of love.
No offspring will result from passion's heat.
Your former selves are hardly worth a glance.

Already, in the magic of a glance,
Your redesign continues from within
As macronuclei reboot. The heat
Of living draws its strength from shuffled genes.
Alone, far from the deep embrace of love,
You split in two. Your child asserts, "I am!"

The same as your departed mate's "I am!"
Identical at first and every glance,
Then altering, with every act of love,
Beyond all recognition. Look within.
What soul survives the changing of the genes?
What self transcends your all-transforming heat?

A billion years ago, atop the heat
Of Earth, when my precursors cried, "I am!"
They parted from your wanton ways with genes.
They kept their form for longer than a glance,
To stabilize their sense of self within,
To secret their identities in love.

From birth, my genes have told me who I am.
But deep within I seek another's heat,
If only for a glance of selfless love.

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"First Generation," by Meliors Simms

We three kids squirm into a sleepsack
then roll recklessly, hilariously, downslope
bouncing past icefalls
like frozen spaghetti in tomato sauce.

Tumble away from home, such daring
but only as far as the old port
where we wriggle, bruised and chortling,
back to our separate selves, to swarm and scavenge.

We climb to the top of the biggest tank,
level with the glacier’s crevassed and crumbling lip,
sprawl in the distant light of both suns
and pool our meager gleanings, boast of our daring.

How long before some parent comes looking for us?
Our air would run out first, but we are hungry
so we slip in the farm tent’s lock, strip off our dusty suits
and pretend we’ve been inside all day.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Quarks & Strings • Marge Simon
• President's Message/Rhysling Awards • Deborah P Kolodji
• The Hope in Horror Poetry • Karen L. Newman
• Man of Mercury, Edwin Morgan • Steve Sneyd
• Poetics of the Sphere: A Rough Guide to Modern Science Poetry • Robert Frazier
• Call for 2011 Rhysling Nominations
• Reviews from the Small Press • Edward Cox, David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Poetry

• An Incomplete Map of Death • Jennifer Crow
• The Cemetery • Kurt Newton
• untitled • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Dark Needs • Wendy Rathbone
• Last Thoughts • Rhonda Parrish
• Attachment • Rhonda Parrish
• Afterimage • Jennifer Crow
• Breathless • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• Twelve Quatrains Channeling Nostradamus • Bruce Boston
• Secrets • Wendy Rathbone
• Planetfall • C. William Hinderliter
• haiku • assu
• On the Platform • Malcolm Deeley
• Batches • Michael Fosburg
• Nachthexen • Ann K. Schwader
• The Witch In Your Mirror • Ann K. Schwader
• her lithe splendour • Mike Allen
• Skipping Stone • Alan Vincent Michaels
• Frankenstein’s Cat • Robert Borski
• Holes • Carolyn Clink
• The Conjuror • Stephen M. Wilson
• Howard d’oeuvres • Stephen M. Wilson
• Chagrin du Vampire • James S. Dorr

Science Poetry — edited by Robert Frazier

• The Study of nonTerran Languages • Suzette Haden Elgin
• Ciliate Sestina • Elissa Malcohn
• First Generation • Meliors Simms
• Miner’s Cook • Meliors Simms
• The Pantheon • Robert Borski
• Cultural Exchange • F.J. Bergmann
• Alienated • Ann K. Schwader
• Quasar • Geoffrey A. Landis
• A Hollander’s Secret Weapon • Marge Simon
• Letter Perfect • Lauren McBride
• Unbroken • F.J. Bergmann
• Four Percent • Ann K. Schwader
• Quantum Hipsters • J. R. Salling
• Robot • Angel Favazza
• Duet Singularity • Elissa Malcohn
• Central to Our Core • Lauren McBride
• A Long-Tailed Comet • Angel Favazza
• Fourth Graders Ask, Should Scientists Clone the Woolly Mammoth? • Geoffrey A. Landis
• What Fermilab Found • Suzanne Sykora
• Galileo’s Ghost • Marge Simon
• Call of the Wired • Angel Favazza
• Compatibility • F.J. Bergmann
• Requiem Æternam • Alan Vincent Michaels
• Epitaph for Homo Floresiensis • Geoffrey A. Landis