Online Issue Contents

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • When the Music Stops by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
  • The Stars Prevail by G. O. Clark

• Full Table of Contents

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Editor's Choice Poems

"When the Music Stops," by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

He sent her looking
for stolen horses,
bade her not return
until the thieves were
found and caught, and
made to bleed their sad
apologies into his waves.
He sent her searching,
his trident held in hands
with knuckles white as
fresh sea foam, his beard
a kraken in the frothing,
angry surf, but did not
think to search her eyes.
He did not think to ask her
if she found his horses fair,
or if she felt he hoarded them
too closely, keeping them
where only he, and those
merfolk he favored most,
might see their grace.
And when she paused,
all trembling, near the
beach-side carousel,
to watch the snow-maned
ponies dancing to a music
nothing like the sea,
he was not there to see her tears.
He did not hear the
sorrow in her siren voice
as each proud mount was
summoned home, nor notice
when she slit her wrists
to spill pale blood on
fragments of a bright brass ring.

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"The Stars Prevail," by G. O. Clark

The stars have all but slipped away,
the future land locked in the present,
eyes tracking the horizontal.

The city lights have diminished them.
Television's glow distanced them.
Eye fatigue blurred their points.

The daily news leaves them to heaven.
The poets only gaze into their locked closets.
The novelists are too busy chasing dragons.

The stars have all but slipped away
except to those who carry their homes upon
their wish-laden backs.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Quarks & Strings • Marge Simon
• President’s Message • Deborah P Kolodji
• Contest Announcement • Marge Simon
• Stealth SF • Denise Dumars
• The Fountainhead of Horror • John Amen
• From the Small Press • Denise Dumars
• From the Small Press • Edward Cox, John Garrison, Neal Wilgus

Poetry

• Ossuary • Marina Lee Sable
• Morgaine, This Fury Beneath Patina • W. C. Roberts
• New Pompeii • Robert Borski
• When the Music Stops • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• Antigone: a ’ku cycle • Shelley Bryant
• Holes • LeRoy Gorman
• The Man Trap • Lyn C. A. Gardner
• (untitled) • semi
• Bowie Knife Babble • Gary Every
• (untitled within illustration) • Angel Favazza, with Denny Marshall
• The Way Uncharted • John Tumlin
• Sea • John Maclay
• The Stars Prevail • G. O. Clark
• Putting old eggs out to pasture • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• A Gray Space • Kevin Heaton
• Xenochemical Conundrum • Tanner Wiens
• Sealskins • Robert E. Stutts
• Tail-Wag • Robert Borski
• Outward Voyage • Elizabeth W. Bennefeld
• (untitled) • LeRoy Gorman
• The Highest Honor • K. M. Praschak
• (untitled) • semi
• Stages • LeRoy Gorman
• Blood Runner • Ridley Scott
• Aurelia aurita • Ann K. Schwader
• Pumping Up the Local Economy • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• (untitled) • semi
• Hanny’s Voorwerp • Marsheila Rockwell
• Graffiti Tree • Mary A. Turzillo
• Clothes of Yesterday • Angel Favazza
• Two Haiku • Yunsheng Jiang
• (untitled) • Karen Newman
• Confession • Neal Wilgus
• Dear Mom • David S. Pointer
• Dogtown, Cape Ann, Massachusetts • Scott E. Green
• The Hood • LeRoy Gorman
• Japanese Muse • Alexandra Seidel
• Word Balloons • Elsa Colon
• Au Pair • Robert Borski
• The Poet Addresses a Theory of Quantum Mechanics… • Rhonda Palmer
• Just Like… • Elizabeth Barrette
• (untitled) • Shelley Bryant
• Pattern Recognition • J. E. Stanley