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“[animal revolt]”
Star*Linevol 45, no. 4Fall 2022 Description Three short lines, one ferocious attack. Background When I started reading Star*Line and other publications from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, I was bemused by the shortest poems, those one or two or three line wonders that offer a quick punchline or pithy speculative thought. It wasn’t…
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“ad perficiendum”
“Everything breaks down. During a season of harms, / every disaster looks premeditated. You imagine things.”
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“Pangaea Proxima,” “Panthalassa,” & “Juniper Tree, Boy and Bird”
“My mother is a superocean. She bore us. Bears us. Bears / our accusations in rain and rivulet to river. A wave, she / surrounds us.”
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“Bird Chooses to Make a Habitat of Heart”
“Give me back / my heart, beautiful bird. Mistake me for an open window.”
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“I Can’t Explain Love or Loss if the Only Language I Have is Geology or What I Watch on YouTube”
“The couple quit uploading to YouTube two years ago. / Their videos are something pitiful and earnest now, / something long buried, sand-scratched, rubbed raw. / Thumbs down, I think. None of my business.”
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“In Which I Invent a Man”
“I must / still look for / him. My constant / resentment.”
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“In a Mirror, Dimming”
“Beyond the scarred surface, I saw the bones of the Moon, / the geology of a crime. He would not speak of it.”
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“Witch House”
“Little girls in white dresses skipping rope / & chanting singsong in slow motion we stole / from an 80’s horror film.”
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“Passage”
“I drove Pacific Northwest November numb / through trees like tall green drifts to the ocean / seething with chaos.”
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“Elysium to Lethe Through Athabasca Valles”
“Lava, perfectly happy to flow like water smoothly / around obstructions”
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“[Aliens are here]”
“Aliens are here”
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Shadow Award 2019 Short List
In the 2019 Shadow Award from The Molotov Cocktail, one of my entries landed me on the short list.
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“November in Portland”
“High school like autumn: / rain, mud, dark, / snow seems a day away.”
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“Distraction”
“I watch light flicker under the bathroom door. / I watch the clock. / I watch one foot with a sock on jealous of the other.”
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“Foolishly Into the Ocean”
“Divert the river from the ocean!”
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“a haunting” & “Annular Eclipse”
“the lizard / in the bathroom / where I left it alone”
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“My Unbelievable Man”
“His shoulder next to my shoulder / is warm pressure communication”
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“Nervous Bambi”
“He blinks and I’m not sure if he’s trying / to embarrass me or if he’s confused by me, too. / He has to be lying.”
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“Looking Ahead”
“I’ve seen the eclipse already. / I’ve seen how it begins: / the radiant sun, the vanished / moon. See how they are going / to collide, the many decisions / the moon made, the sun in its / place and bright and not waiting, / but willing.”
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“Roadside Freak Show”
“The thing crafted from fabric and plaster, / more pile of dirt and wet cardboard / than realistic human skeleton, lies / under glass in a white cinderblock / coffin elevated over the concrete floor / in the last of three corrugated steel sheds / at the roadside attraction.”
Richard Leis
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