Online Issue Contents

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • The Physics of Age and Baseball by Greg Beatty
  • Ravel: An Etymology by Matthew Richards

• Full Table of Contents

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Editor's Choice Poems

"The Physics of Age and Baseball," by Greg Beatty

When hitters are young
they live in a Newtonian universe.
They swing their bats
knowing the rules are the same
for everyone, and hitting
is just a matter
of mass, angles, and reflexes.

But when hitters age
they face a paradigm shift.
Sometimes the world works one way
sometimes another, and they sometimes
hit from deep within gravity wells
where light curves, and
bat masses approach infinity,
eventually making it impossible
to touch the relativistic fastball,
and that sad moment of hesitation is
forever frozen on the October event horizon.

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"Ravel: An Etymology," by Matthew Richards

The verb ravel dates back to the 1580s.

It means “to tangle.” To become confused.
It also means “to untangle.” “To unravel”.
To unwind yourself like a ball of yarn rolling
off the couch and across the kitchen rug.

The contradiction originates in the
Dutch practices of weaving and sewing.
When a thread frays, it ravels, creating
knots too tight to be undone.

My Mémère was a seamstress.
She worked as a finish-stitcher for JF McElwain,
making hundreds of shoes every day.

At 91, she became a defunct
sewing machine. Raveled back to her childhood.
Tried to collect the tattered threads of her language.

The doctor said she had knots in her brain.

Do you remember third grade, the Chinese
finger trap that wouldn’t let go no matter how
hard you tugged? Do you remember the metal
of your parents’ car when it folded into
itself on the highway? Or the ficus outside
your window that strangled the maple tree?

Do you remember your daughter’s smile
before you left for work this morning?
How did the teeth of the VCR look when
it ate her favorite movie for breakfast?

One day, you will emerge from your loom,
a crippled silkworm stumbling towards
wholeness. You will not realize that you’ve
spun yourself a web. That your body knows
parts of itself it couldn’t have named.

There is no core to this sickness.
You have all the thread you need.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Quarks & Strings • Marge Simon
• President’s Message • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Stealth SF • Denise Dumars
• From the Small Press • David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Terrie Leigh Relf, Edward Cox
• Con Report • Elissa Malcohn

Poetry

• Pushing ’12 • Michael Fosburg
• untitled • Ann Schwader
• Space Ninjas • Deborah Walker
• Offering • Kim L. Neidigh
• The Sorcerer’s Curse • Ayaz Daryl Nielsen
• Glow • G. O. Clark
• Ch-Ch-Children! • Ayaz Daryl Nielsen
• Two Moths Spinning in Her Eyes • Gary Every
• A Little Death • Kurt Newton
• Chimera Park • Wade German
• Ledge • Jay McLeod
• Things Lost to Shadow • Marcie Lyn Tentchoff
• Moonstruck • David Lunde
• This Conqueror Wurm • W. C. Roberts
• Space Gorillas of the Martian Mines • Lisa Nohealani Morton
• Dream Desert • Marina Lee Sable
• Hometown • Anna Weaver
• Macrocosmic Propagation • J. E. Stanley
• Crop Circle • Robert Borski
• Photophobe • Ann Schwader
• 2002: Galileo Dies • Mary Turzillo
• No Speck of Land • Elizabeth Barrette

Interplay—edited by Elissa Malcohn

• The Physics of Age and Baseball • Greg Beatty
• subsume • Geoffrey A. Landis
• A Break During Temporal Distortion • Robert Frazier
• Europa’s Stoic Stance • Kurt MacPhearson
• The Golden Ring • Sofia Rhei
• Hypatia • Terrie Leigh Relf
• Cosmoritus • Mitchell Hart
• Astronauts and Angels • Elizabeth Barrette
• (untitled) • Marcus Ewert
• How Fallen Angels Spend Their Golden Years • William John Watkins
• IV. The Emperor • Alison Stone
• Ravel: An Etymology • Matthew Richards
• The Orchard • Holly Day
• Tree (for H.D.) • Charlotte Hussey
• Workman’s Creed • Ken Poyner
• Identity • Sandra Lindow
• Multi-tasking • F. J. Bergmann
• How Martha Saved Her Life and Marriage • Gail Sosinsky Wickman
• Shuffling Off • Noel Sloboda
• Kitchen Carcharodon • Robert Borski
• Talking to SimMan • Roy Bayfield
• An Absence of Superheroes • Karen L. Newman
• Puppet Minds • Alexandra Seidel
• Lullaby for Ununoctium • Matthew Richards
• Heliocentric • P. S. Cottier
• Self-Assembled Universe • Melissa Frederick