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Published by Associate Editor on June 1, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 26, Issue 26 Stories

Death is Only a Memory

by Kate Runnels

deathisonlyamemory1A bright flash of white, vivid in its intensity, shocked her and then sudden and complete blackness engulfed her.

Lia shuddered.

They were ghosts, whispers of what they once were. Fragments; fragments from her implants, her external memory. Nothing was clear. Everything jumbled together out of order, without any semblance of synchronicity.

Lia’s links, all of her connections that reached into cyberspace connecting her to any net, had gone blank. Lia was cut off. She was in a darkness so deep the fear faded in the vastness. Panic came and went, washing over her like sheets of rain, pounding down and then fading only to come back.

She knew only one thing. She had been wiped.

There were things she should know, but didn’t. She had relied too heavily on her cybernetic memory enhancements. But organic memory degraded and blurred with time. Lia tried to access file after file. Each one came up empty, blank.. Everything had been wiped from her memory.

She had been wiped!

The anger and outrage swept over her and for long moments she couldn’t think of anything else.

Lia couldn’t help but wonder how? She had always been careful, set barriers-attack and passive- firewalls, even virus mazes, to defeat or deflect hackers from accessing her mind and gaining the classified information within. She knew what became of those wiped of memory, not able to even dress themselves; they were reduced to an infant state. Then there were those who’d been hacked, or imprinted with false memories, not knowing who they really were and always questioning their actions.

Lia was an Agent, she protected others from this or brought to justice those who perpetrated such things.

The empty spaces in her mind informed her that she had been wiped. Maybe it hadn’t been a hack? With her brain and the cybernetic parts shielded, it would have had to be a short range, pinpoint blast with an EMP. If that was the case whoever perpetrated this act needed the knowledge of where her cybernetic implants were located. How had this happened?

That memory, too, couldn’t be accessed, wiped clean.

Lia initiated her search program, entering keywords.

2B y47-m04-d11: a memory file she knew from days ago. It blinked at her: File not found. Empty; Empty; Empty. But there had been something there.

She had been wiped!

Pounding at the void, uselessly, frustratingly, she struggled within her mind for the remembrances. It took a very long time to calm herself. She would have to try and piece everything together from her organic side. That would take time. Time she felt she didn’t have.

She tried to piece the fragments together. But they were true ghosts, with little left to them; a shape without substance.

She searched her other memory, searched for fragments to tie together. Her long-term memory remained, untouched. She thanked whomever for that, but everything up to two weeks ago – gone. She thought back, she had arrived at work, heading for a meeting with her boss. Was her boss now trying to hide something from her? Was the H.K.S.A? If her own employers were out to get her, she had done something terribly wrong. She had to know!

 

“Hong Kong Security Agency; what is the nature of your call?”

Another phone rang farther on down the row of desks answered in a similar fashion by a similar receptionist.

Agent Liana Sasaki wound her way through the maze of desks with the ease of long familiarity. Lia carried no discernable weapons; it helped in many cases to put victims as ease. She didn’t need weapons. Her left arm had been cyberized, and when it opened up she needed nothing else.

The room was small and packed to capacity and even overflowing into the agent’s offices in all dimensions, up, down and around. Greeting a few of the receptionists by name, she continued past, without stopping to chat, toward the back offices. They were busy and she had a meeting to attend in a few minutes.

The Agency hadn’t changed very much since she began working for them seven years ago. It had grown from what she remembered, having then only six receptionists who took calls and greeted people as they walked in from the street. Now the Agency had sixty in three shifts round the clock. And back then, she would have been one of the units sent out to handle one of the emergency calls. She still remembered her designation: 5-2-4. But she was no longer Unit 5-2-4, not since her partner Ming had died and if she didn’t hurry she would be late.

deathisonlyamemory3Lia stepped into her boss’s office. Matt Decoto. He wasn’t the president of the agency, he had never wanted much responsibility, but he had been around since the Agency’s conception. He sat now typing into his computer. He had a thick head of grey hair, a body that had at one time been fit, but a long time in the past. He used DNA specifics to keep his bulk reasonable, but mainly to increase memory and working speed. Typing was an old affectation.

He looked up as she came in.

“Sit down, Senior Agent Sasaki. I’ll be just a moment.”

Lia sat and waited until he turned to her. “Sasaki.”

“Yes, Chief of Investigations Decoto. Why the formality?”

“There is a case I want your personal attention on. Unit 10-23 handled the original call. A gang of cybernetic enhanced children, children who’ve rejected their tech attachments-”

“The autistic’s who’ve even rejected treatment?”

“Yes. They attacked and molested a young natural woman with no enhancements and carrying no discernable tech. The attack itself is unusual and where it occurred. But the victim has disappeared after the attack.”

“That is strange, but not unheard of. Do we have any identification on the Disappeared? And I assume we’re considering him/her to be kidnapped at this point in time?”

“Of course. The disappeared is Sunny Shirow’s, our silent partner’s, daughter.” He leaned forward, the chair groaning as he shifted his weight. “He and I want your expert skills on this case, and handled with the utmost discretion.”

“Of course, Matt, when have I ever been anything but discrete?” She smiled at him as he glared at her from under his bushy eyebrows.

“Just handle it, and handle it quickly, Lia, we don’t need or want the media coverage on this.”

“Yes, boss. No problem boss. Don’t worry about a thing, boss.” She still smiled as she stood and left his office to find Unit 10-23; Agent Sung and Agent Maxwell.

Heading to a different part of the building, she hoped to catch the Unit at their desks. She didn’t really like them and the feeling was mutual.

They looked up from their computer terminals, and the sheets of paper spread out around their desks. She asked without greeting them, “Have you filed a report yet on the disappearance?”

“Sending it now, Senior Agent Sasaki,” said Agent Sung, pressing a button on the touch screen. The report came in, and she took a moment with her cybernetic enhancements to bring it up in front of one eye to read it.

“Well, this is different,” Lia said. “What happened to shoot first and tell lies later?”

“Funny. Get out of our space, Sasaki, and let us do our work.” Sung went back to typing.

Agent Maxwell still looked at her. “Can’t see why Decoto wanted you on this case, you can’t even keep a partner.” There was no love or warmth one might feel for humanity between them.

 

Lia came out of her memory searching for more, but she couldn’t remember all of the details. She hated organic memory. She couldn’t access it anytime she wanted with full detail of sound and visual.

So what happened after?

Lia initiated another search using different parameters. File not found. Empty. Empty. Empty. After the third empty, words appeared: Delete. Delete. I. Eat. Meat.

She had been tampered with; those were her safe words for any type of tampering within her mind. At the same time, it informed her that those who had wiped her were still around even though she couldn’t access sound or sight, in some way the program could.

Lia knew now there was something beyond the void in which she existed. She would proceed, cautiously.

The next memory, and the one following, there would be clues as to what happened. She tried to remember what had happened after meeting with unit Ten-twenty three. She had headed to the specified address in their incident report.

 

The door opened and an old woman peered up at her through old-fashioned corrective lenses. Lia doubted she had ever seen something like that outside of history books or old movies. With cybernetic implants, and DNA specifics, many people opted to replace their defective eyes; the old woman had not.

The woman might not be a hard line naturalist and no Transhumanist, but it was no wonder she had called in the assault and kidnapping of a natural, by cyber autistics. Lia would ask a few question 10-23 hadn’t thought to cover during the original call.

A car honked behind her. She saw it flash past in the lenses of the glasses facing her. There was so much movement there, cars, people, bikers, dogs, but the eyes behind those lenses gazed at her steadily. The old woman blinked slowly through her think lenses. Bringing one age-lined knuckle-swollen hand, she rubbed at her eyes underneath the glasses. “I must be seeing things.” She looked again at Lia. “No. I’m not. But it can’t be real.”

deathisonlyamemory2“Ma’am, are you, Mrs. Chan?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Are you Liana Sasaki?”

“Yes,” she answered slowly. What was going on here? This old woman had taken her completely off her stride with one simple question. The sounds of the street intruded, people laughing, talking on their links to someone else, maybe a block away, maybe half a planet away. Lia missed what Mrs. Chan said next.

“What did you say?”

“I said,” the old woman repeated, “you haven’t aged a day in thirty years. It’s remarkable, even with the tech advances nowadays. I know it has been a long time, but surely you remember me?”

Lia shook her head, uncomprehending. She was supposed to question Mrs. Chan, not the other way around.

“I’m Alison Chan.”

“That can’t be possible. That must be your granddaughter or daughter.”

“I only have a son who is unmarried. I’m sorry, but that is me, I assure you. You really don’t remember? Anything? We served together with the UN peacekeepers in New Congo during the war. Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion.”

“No.” She stepped back, off the front entryway, slipping on the last step and stumbled into a pedestrian. Catching herself, she gave a hasty apology and crossed the street as fast as she could to get away from those motion reflecting glasses and the unwavering eyes behind.

Lia gave one last bewildered look at Mrs. Chan, a friend from a long time ago. One she hadn’t seen if Lia believed the old woman, in thirty years. That couldn’t be correct. Since leaving school only ten years has passed, ten years, not thirty.

A car honked and Lia moved out of the way. She needed a place to think, a place to get information. She pushed the case into a secondary position in her mind, not entirely forgotten, but not at the top of priority. She could hack into the City Traffic database to find the surveillance footage and ID the assailants then put a virus in to track their movements. Later. First, she would find somewhere where she wouldn’t be distracted. All thoughts of the Carime Shirow, of her abduction, were gone.

She needed answers of a different sort now. She headed for a Cyber café, she could plug in there, think and get information.

 

The memory dulled and she came back into herself, still thinking. She had found information on herself by delving throughout the web. Some info had taken little time, but others took much longer and then she found it: her original birth certificate. It had to be a fake, a forgery, some hacker tampering with information for a joke.

It had listed her date of birth as 2084. That wasn’t possible. She was born 2119. 2119 not 2084, however, with the two facts so close together, the old woman and the birth certificate; it wasn’t coincidence.

What was going on? Who had wiped her? Why had she been wiped?

What had she done next?

She still hadn’t believed. She had gone back to the Agency, gone deep down below the main offices to the labs and had her cybernetics checked and updated. There she had snuck into the security mainframe for the Agency. If she’d had the time she could have found all the answers to her questions, but Decoto had paged her over her links.

Then, the memories fogged, she could only catch glimpses, as if she were trying to remember a dream, days later.

She relaxed and let the images come of themselves, and then she had one; later, but clear and along the path to answers.

 

“Do you remember when the police forces around the world failed?” Decoto asked her.

An odd question, but she would go with it. He had paged her so quickly after her access of the information on the net; he must have had it flagged. He had the answers. She waited, stalling. Knowing the truth would change her in some inconceivable way she couldn’t anticipate. Lia wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

She shook her head. “I was no older than a couple of months, back then.”

“No, you weren’t.” He smiled, the stubble on his face parting to show his white teeth. “But tell me what you remember, from history books and what not.” He sat behind his desk and leaned back in his chair, observing her, watching her.

“Fine. It happened almost immediately after the African Nations War,” she began. “the natural resources in Africa drew the global powers which funded, directly and indirectly, to militia’s, warlords and even the countries. As the war dragged on- it pulled the world into a recession. So after the cease fire, and with the treaties signed, the governments sent their military’s home. but that only worsened the recession. This is when the police forces around the world failed.

“Poverty, hunger, and disillusionment, were widespread with governments in many countries doing little to improve the situation. Street gangs, the poor, the disgruntled, those who’d served their countries and gotten little in compensation and many more struck in force. It led to riots occurred in all major cities of the world. Many of the police officers perpetrated crimes at this time, expecting, in the confusion, to be overlooked, and get off without punishment. But the crimes only fueled the anger of the populace and the police forces were overwhelmed and ineffective. Before the respective countries governments declared martial law, ex-military, ex-cops, and many others banded together to create the first all-encompassing security agency.” She scrutinized Decoto while she spoke.

His only motion was to blink at random intervals. His breathing was loud, but he was a large man and always breathed loud. His beefy hands never twitched, never moved, he only stared at her.

“The security agencies put down the riots and brought peace to the streets when the police could not. Around the world, the other cities followed suit, as what happened here in Hong Kong. The Agencies don’t work for the governments and are funded more like insurance companies. After a year in business, no one called the police for help any longer. The governments disbanded all but a token force and put the funding elsewhere. It helped stimulate the economy, creating jobs, and a safer living and work environment. Government money was now being used in necessary areas, instead of a police force that was shown to be corrupt and ineffective. ”

She paused, remembering his words. “What do you mean; I wasn’t a baby back then?”

A million other thoughts and possibilities flashed through her mind in that brief moment. Decoto rubbed at his stubble of a beard before answering her.

“You already suspect it; it is why you are here. You accessed information you weren’t supposed to find, buried as it was under useless data. But it only confirms for me how close we are to reaching full potential. Lia, you missed one large fact: you were one of the co-founders of this agency.”

“That’s impossible.”

Decoto gazed steadily at her.

“It’s not possible,” she said. “I have cybernetics but I am not a full body cyborg. I should show some signs of aging. I look twenty-seven. I am twenty-seven! I had to work my ass off to become a senior agent, the youngest ever! I am not that old.”

“But you are.”

“Shouldn’t I remember this past you speak of? I remember going to military Academy; I remember graduating; school, my parents, friends, my childhood. I do not remember co-founding the Hong Kong Agency. Why don’t I remember?” Why didn’t she remember? She wanted to know the truth. She readied one of her cybernetic parts in her arm with a thought, readying for a strike. She wanted answers and, so far, he hadn’t been very helpful. She could change all that.

“It’s all in there.” He pointed to her head.

“What – suppressed, blocked?”
“Yes.”

“By your orders? The executive board? Chairman Zhang?”

“No; by yours.”

“You lie. I want to know the truth. Tell me.”

“I think I have said too much. There will be many repercussions from this.”

“You will tell me.” Left arm, as fast as an eye blink, split apart, changing into one of her interrogation tools: one that subdued or drugged. Before she could use it, Decoto laughed at her and faded from sight.

She snarled again but to herself. Talking to a hologram, how had she missed something like that?

 

The organic memory fuzzed at the edges, but she could catch more, slightly more.

She remembered wanting to track him down to kill him, no, to make him suffer as he made her suffer, and then end it.

The needed answers continued eluding her. Decoto had done something to her. She was older than she looked and remembered, but how? And where was she now? How did she get here, wherever here was? Had what happened to her happen to Carime Shirow? Were their cases similar?

Back at the Cyber Café, she found the recorded images of the attack reported by ten twenty-three. She thought hard to remember. Why had the Autistic kids turned after they had passed by her and then attack? Carime had nothing cybernetic in her records, but were they fake too? She’d done enough rewriting of data to know records were never true. There was something she was missing. The records might have been hacked and tampered with, but there was one thing. The image on the screen showed a young girl, but the records stated her age as 26 and deceased in a transportation crash. She was dead; she was alive? What was happening? She’d found all this before being paged by Decoto. Was any of it relevant?

Who had attacked her: Decoto, the autistic cyber children, or an anonymous third party? Lia wanted to remember what had happened to her, what happened after leaving Decoto’s office?

She wanted to remember.

That’s it! She had wanted to remember. Decoto had answered a question. She had suppressed and blocked memories. Those could answer what she needed. But to do that they had to be retrieved. She’d contacted someone in the sub-basement. She could trust him. She’d had no one else; she had to trust him.

 

“I need your help, Holt.”

“For what?”

“Memory retrieval and possible reconstruction.”

“Now you’ve got my attention. Blocked, I bet. Any barriers, attack viruses, mazes, burn-outs? I’ll have to go carefully. Who’s the subject?”
“I am.”

He blinked, slow to open them back up, his almost complete black eyes vanishing for a long moment. “Why are you coming to me? You hate me.”
“Hate is such a strong word.” He raised his eyebrows. She took in a deep breath and said, “Fine. Hate. I am calling because you are the best. And I need the best.”

“I’m flattered.”

“That doesn’t make me like you any better.”

“Sorry. But I’m still flattered.”

“Right.”

She shook her head at the image on the screen. “When can we do this?”

“A half hour? A lot of the stuff I need is at the office. Can we meet at my lab?”

“I’m at the office. What do you need; I can get it for you.”

“You’re at the office?”
“Yes.”

“So am I.”

“I’ll be right down.” Lia cut the connection. She paused and looked around the office, thinking – would it still be the same office for her? Her chair, she’d had for two years, with the squeak when she leaned back: the indented carpet where she paced when she thought. Would they be the same? Would she remember a different office? Would the photos be different than she remembered? With different, unknown, unknowing people staring at her. Would she still be Lia?

Would she still be Lia? That was the million dollar question.

Her memory jumped.

She was in the lab with Holt going through the procedure. She tried, but could not bring anything into focus from before that. Hopefully, it was nothing important.

Lia lay on a cool table; the cold started to bleed through her clothes and deep into her; maybe not all of it came from the table. She did not know what to expect, but she would not back out now.

Her eyes flicked from the equipment and tech above her to different things around the small lab in nervousness; wires, computers, racks, displays, lifts and much more. She did not understand any of the stuff or how it worked. She didn’t care. Only caring with what it did. It would give Lia her memories back.

But would she still be her? Would it change her? Would she find that everything she believed in, every truth she held might be wrong? She had already found some truths to be wrong. The table shook as Lia shivered on it, wondering if all of her would be tossed to the side. But that fear wouldn’t stop her, she longed to know.

Lia glanced from the bright lights to Arzi Holt. His thin body walked back to her, while fiddling with something in his long fingered hands.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

“It all depends on what memories are unlocked, if there are any to unlock.”

“There are. But that’s not what I meant.”

He looked down at her then, meeting her eyes. “No, the actual process will not hurt. Close your eyes and try to relax and we’ll begin the process.” He disappeared from sight behind the machines beside her. They began whirring as they started up before settling down into a constant hum. Closing her eyes, she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was right; she didn’t want to watch any of his actions, always wondering what he did now – what would happen now? It would be much easier to let the memories come to her in blackness.

Lia jerked upright with a gasp!

Where was she? What had happened? What was that?

Glancing around, she found herself in a small office, lying on a couch pressed tight against one wall. A desk crammed the rest of the office; scattered objects littered every available space – papers, books, tech, toys and the tools of a cyborg specialist. Ordinary in its clutter, plain almost, nothing to frighten her here. Except—

She blinked. She hadn’t dreamed. It hadn’t been a nightmare. All of it was as real as this moment. If she rested now in Holt’s office, then the procedure worked-had worked. Not a dream; a memory.

She had died.

Lia remembered dying. She cupped her face in her hands. The feeling of the knife sliding into her flesh, felt as real now as it had then; the searing, tearing, burning pain; turning to see the gleeful look of the hyped and overloaded Cyborg; of herself slipping down the wall, gasping for breath and going into darkness. Lia took in a deep ragged breath and let it out just a shaky.

Holt stepped into the office. She glanced away from her memories to see his face. It wasn’t the same face she remembered. Though his face hadn’t changed with the introduction of new/old memories. Everything she saw there screamed sadness to her. Why was he so sad?

“You’re awake? Did you feel any pain? No lasting effects of the hack/dive and suppression removal?” He paused. “Did it work?”

“It worked.” Lia managed, not trusting her voice for anything more complex.

“I know what happened.” He stepped closer, his voice matching his face, his whole posture. The arrogant hacker she’d arrested, was gone; where? Where was the youthful pride that she resented and hated? She wished for it now “While you slept, I went diving into the secure files section in the main frame. I found some very interesting things.” He handed her a handheld data comp with the info displayed on the five-inch screen.

“Hacking again? That’s what got you busted down here in the first place.”

“I know, but I think you’ll thank me for it. It seems, well, I’ll let you read.” He fell quiet and Lia glanced one last time at this changed Arzi Holt, before studying the info. And studied the screen- and then re-read it a third time. Finally, she let it droop into her lap. Slowly she met his eyes.

“I did die. I thought, hoped, it was only a dream when I woke up.” She cocked her head to one side. “I remember it. I know I died, and yet know it wasn’t me who died. Only it was. Can you begin to understand this? I can’t. It’s so confusing a jumble of thoughts and emotions of who am I? What am I? Everything is in here. All of it.” She licked her lips; swallowed, knowing she rambled but not able to stop. “All of it. I’m a copy? A copy. I can’t connect the two of me. Can I connect the two? Holt, some memories- my childhood- for example, are the same. But it’s like laser beams merging, converging for a time, before separating and going their own way but at a different trajectory then the ones they were on before meeting. I really don’t know how to explain it.”

But now she knew why she had blocked these memories in the first place. Her company needed to continue, but this whole process was experimental, as well as extremely dangerous. She’d signed the release only days before her death.

Who knows what might happen if someone hacked her mind and found she was not only a clone, but with original memories and illegal cybernetics; dangerous, and very scary. Decoto had gone too far. He had abused his knowledge and position; more than once. He went far beyond her original instructions to him. Plus, he had tried to kill her, had managed to kill her. She would deal with him.

Were these thoughts now, her own, or part of the original? Where did the original end and the Lia she was now actually begin? Was she only an extension of something that died twenty years ago? Who was she really? The person who’d created HKSA after the collapse of police forces, or the one who’d let a hacker off and even had him join the company in repayment to those he’d harmed? Did she have her own thoughts, reactions, could she think creatively, respond originally, or was that programmed in from the original?

Her mind refused to focus on these issues, but they had to be resolved. She wanted to pace, but there was only a path to the desk and from there to the door. How could Holt be so ordered and precise in his codes but live like this? The question let her relax for a second on something other than herself, herselves?

Holt spoke up then, “They keep some of the original cells in the central vault in sub-section twelve.”

“Yeah; I read that.” She studied his face for a moment, down turned, sad. But she knew him, having profiled him for years before tracking him down, he hid something from her. “There’s something else.” He didn’t answer. But there was something else, some discrepancy with her memory and the information she had been given. “Something’s not right. If I, well, the original, died twenty years ago, this body – I – should be older.”

“Right.”

“How many others have there been of me? Of the original?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody does; I’m sure somebody does. Somebody in this company, yes. This company for so long keeping peace and order, it’s gone above the law. It wasn’t like this before. But I know who to go to.” She stood up, she knew what she should do, but uncertain if the idea was hers, or the other. The life she had stolen or the life forced upon her. She needed time to think through all of this new info. She really didn’t know where to go, or what to do. Every action brought questions; was that her or the original? Every action brought doubts. She doubted habits, likes, dislikes, her very beliefs and ideals. Lia was now more confused than she had been; but she had answers. She had answers.

A depressing thought.

Lia wandered out of Holt’s office. She headed out of the building and walked aimlessly in the crowded, colorful Hong Kong streets. She usually loved to walk the streets; to hear the people: the haggling, the talk and the gossip. She loved to see the bright flashing advertisements, seeing new things or different things. Buildings loomed over her. Lights flashed in all different colors across her face and people passed all around her, sometimes bumping, sometimes swerving. Tonight she took no notice. The places didn’t matter; the people didn’t matter; only thoughts mattered.

But were they her thoughts? Did the original control everything she did, had done? Will do in the future? How did she even know, how could she tell the difference?

Lia liked to walk when she thought, but was that truly her? Or was it an action of the original? She searched through her new memories and found so many she couldn’t distinguish from her own and that of the original. Some merged, overlapped, but sometimes even that overlap differed. She may have sat instead of standing, or jumped over the rail instead of taking the stairs. But she couldn’t differentiate between them. Which were hers? Which the originals? Was anything hers?

Who was she?

Amdeathisonlyamemory5 I an individual with my own thoughts, actions, responses, or am I only a part of another, an extension of someone else?

Who am I really?

Lia kept walking.

 

So that was it.

She had confronted Decoto. She had gone back to the Agency building and headed down to sub-section twelve and the central vault. There she found many interesting things in the databases not connected to the main hub, and the culture tanks and re-growing new bodies. She found Carime Shirow, being grown anew. Had they found the other dead or given up hope? Somehow the Cyber Autistics had known she was a clone. The how was beyond Lia. And now, Carime was being re-grown for Daddy. She wondered if Decoto had something to do with this. She didn’t find out then for security personnel arrived.

She had underestimated Decoto. A security force charged into the culture room with the grey banks of monitoring machines; elements of the security force she had helped train! They had her trapped. But they had underestimated her too, she had not informed everyone about all of her special modifications. Unit ten–twenty three no longer existed. Lia had never liked them anyway. But in the end, she’d been overwhelmed. The capture happened quickly.

Something seemed to snap within her mind. Something invisible – that had held her immobile. Her eyes flicked open and she could hear voices as if they stood far away on a quiet day. She turned up her hearing receptors as she studied what she could see in front of her. She didn’t want to risk moving too much until she knew her situation.

She lay on a flat metal slab of a table, tilted nearly forty-five degrees to vertical. And the room was cold. She couldn’t feel it for some reason, but she could smell it; the way it affected machines, screens, metal and wires – leaving a distinctive scent. Wires trailed away from her body to connect out of sight with several monitoring machines and possibly more. Lia heard them humming contentedly to themselves. She didn’t know what they did or monitored. Some might even inform others she was awake and aware now. That couldn’t be helped.

Lia lay half turned on her left side, to help reach her cybernetic implants in back. She sensed something more than other machines behind her.

One of the voices sounded all too familiar.

Her eyes slid to look out of the corner of her right eye, to see beside her as best she could. The motion very slow so as not to draw attention. She saw the front of the lab, with a large glass paneling separating the room. The glass soundproofing making the voices beyond sound far away: to men still spoke.

One – in a doctors white lab coat –explained something to the other. The other – Decoto, her boss, stood looking imposing and important. Lia guessed he wasn’t her boss anymore, and thinking back, she had first hired him for his position. She was his boss. Ironic.

“The new clone isn’t taking the memories,” the doctor said. “By some process, the old clone has erected several blockers, firewalls, attack viruses and barriers around her memories. And, this is the amazing part, even around the organic tissue. And though we couldn’t access those memories because of the preventive measures, we managed to wipe them.”

“How can you be sure if you can’t access the area?”

“We know the exact location of the implants from the files, I helped install many of them and the EMP blast targeted those areas.”

“That might be taking it a bit too far, very unnecessary. The clone will be disposed of soon anyway.”

“Maybe, but the EMP pulse will wipe memory and if the clone is tampered with before dumping of the body, it is a good precautionary measure to clear all the short term memory.”

“Good.”

So they had wiped her! Not all of it. They had tried a dump and wipe, but couldn’t get at it. Lia would have to thank Holt for that. He had done more it seemed, than unblock her memories, improving upon her own security measures She didn’t like people messing around in her mind, but in this instant she could almost kiss Holt. Almost.

deathisonlyamemory6The doctor continued, “We need to discontinue with this process and start anew with the original cells. A step could possibly have been missed with the new clone.”

The glass showed a slight reflection of the room around her. She could make out her own body, with parts missing. She trailed cybernetic linkages as she might intestines or ripped flash. Her left arm, the cybernetics taken off below the elbow, looked hallow, almost forlorn. She could see behind her.

To her.

The new clone. They had yet to begin installing cybernetic parts. The body remained whole, clean, pure, pristine. It made Lia sad in a way. The two men continued talking, distracting her.

“And the bodies?”

“I doubt we can learn anything more out of them. Have them taken to the incinerator.”

How callous! She was Decoto’s superior. She had started this agency, not him! He would not dump her or harm her in any way or form. Lia, more than just a clone, more than just a cyborg, she had her own thoughts, her own feelings. She was not a thoughtless automaton, like the car AI or the coffee machine.

Pushing off with the stump of her left arm, she ripped wires out of it with the other. Lights began flashing in the other room. They stared at the read outs, then looked up to stare at her through the glass. Their expressions were more than she could have hoped. And she still had some special surprises they didn’t know about.

“You will do no such thing, Decoto!” She may only be a clone, only a cyborg; with the cells and memories of the original in her, but she was more than that. Changes were inescapable in life, but people remained who they were and so would she. With the memory wipe and the implanted memories of an original-lost-past not her own. She lived and Lia would be Lia and acquire new memories. She had the right to choose, as did the clone next to her.

She may not have chosen her birth, but who does? She might not be able to choose the time and place of her death, but who does?

But she will choose to fight to keep her life. No confusion clouded in her mind on that issue; the original and clone had no doubts. She faced Decoto, wires trailing out of her, one armed, naked and unarmed. But she had never needed nor relied on a weapon.

“How dare you Matt! Are you trying to create a super human, to go along with your transhumanist ideas?”

“We’re not trying to turn Homo sapiens into homo superior. We are only gaining our full potential as humans, striving to bring it close to us and into us as humans.

“You’re a genetic clone with gene sequencing to make you faster, stronger, smarter, all of it, Lia, no eye sight problems, no arthritis, no debilitating diseases, with, on top of all that, artificial enhancements. Top of the line, experimental, and the in best cybernetics.

“Can’t you see what you are bringing about by being alive? You vindicate what we’ve worked toward for years. The revised cloning act of 2118 can be repealed by you.”

Lia shook her head. “I am not a tool to be used, cast aside, made anew, and used up. I have my own desires, goals and thoughts that are not a part of your super human plan. You made me, but you made me human.” And what she wanted was vengeance.

She stalked forward.

 

– end –

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Introductions, Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry

Interview with Deborah P Kolodji

USC Pacific Asia MuseumIntroduction: Deborah P Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group and currently serves as the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society in America. She has published over 800 poems in journals such as Star*Line, Strange Horizons, the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mythic Delirium, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron’s Nest, A Hundred Gourds, Rattle, Pearl, and poeticdiversity. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, including one of speculative haiku, “Red Planet Dust” in 2007. She has been anthologized in the Rhysling Anthology, the Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Haiku 21, and Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Forms. Her short stories have appeared in THEMA, Tales of the Talisman, and Everyday Weirdness. She has a memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her radio interview with Lois P. Jones on the Poet’s Café, which aired in Los Angeles in 2010, can be heard on the Timothy Green’s Blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/deborah-p-kolodji/
Interview: Silver Blade is delighted to feature Deborah P Kolodji (DPK). The interview is by John C. Mannone (JCM).

 

JCM: What is or is not haiku? I think there’s a perception that a mere three-line short poem with 17 syllabables distributed over three lines ( 5-7-5) constitutes haiku.

DPK: Somehow, haiku made it into the elementary school curriculum as a way to count syllables. So, many people do have this idea that if you write something in 5-7-5, it is a haiku.

This means, of course, that
some very unpoetic
things are called haiku.

In 2013, I helped run a haiku booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the USC campus, and we had a whiteboard where we were conducting impromptu haiku workshops with people passing by. We’d see people stop, look at the sign, start counting on their fingers, and look puzzled. Sometimes they’d stop to talk with us and we’d explain.

In general, traditional haiku in Japanese is written in a pattern of 5-7-5 sounds. The problem is that a Japanese sound is not the same as an English language syllable—it is much shorter. For example, the word “haiku” is two syllables in English, but three sounds in Japanese.This is not how the word is said in Japanese, but it is how the sounds are counted.Michael Dylan Welch elaborates on this topic on his NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing Month – February being the shortest month) website:
https://sites.google.com/site/nahaiwrimo/home/why-no-5-7-5

Notice in the above paragraph, I said “traditional haiku”. There are active groups of haiku poets in Japan who are writing non-5-7-5 haiku in Japanese, so it is obvious that when we try to define what a haiku should be in English or whatever language we are writing it in, we need to reach past this inclination to think of it as something written in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.

Traditional haiku also has a seasonal element and a “cut” or shift, with a juxtaposition, which adds to the complexity of writing a good haiku.Some people think that because they are short, they are easy, but that is far from the case. It is said that a haiku master may spend his whole life trying to write that one “good haiku.”

In 1973, the Haiku Society of America formed a committee to come up with an official definition for haiku and haiku-related forms, and the committee was re-activated in 2004 to come up with the following definition:

A haiku is a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition. (http://www.hsa-haiku.org/archives/HSA_Definitions_2004.html).

 

JCM: I like what Cora Agatucci (Professor of English, Central Oregon Community College) says much better than what Wikipedia says about haiku http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum210/coursepack/haiku.htm

“Haiku is distinguished by its compression and suggestiveness. It consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Traditionally and ideally, a haiku presents a pair of contrasting images, one suggestive of time and place, the other a vivid but fleeting observation. Working together, they evoke mood and emotion. The poet does not comment on the connection but leaves the synthesis of the two images for the reader to perceive.”

DPK: One of the challenges for the haiku community is that this urban legend of 5-7-5, this misunderstanding how to write haiku is deeply rooted in the Academic world. I like much of Agatucci’s definition, although I wish she wasn’t so adamant on the 5-7-5 syllable requirement. A traditional haiku in Japanese will have a “kigo,” a season word that will be “suggestive of time and place” as Agatucci notes, as well as a “kireji,” which means “cutting word.” The kireji divides the haiku into two parts, “a pair of contrasting images, one suggestive of time and place, the other a vivid but fleeting observation.” So, Agatucci’s definition mostly works for me, especially her last line, “The poet does not comment on the connection but leaves the synthesis of the two images for the reader to perceive.”

I teach a lot of haiku workshops, and one of the hardest parts of writing a haiku for the beginning poet is the ability to present images that convey an emotional mood, versus actually stating the emotion or feeling in the haiku.Many beginning poets want to use words like “sad” instead of using an image like “rainy season” to convey sadness.

 

JCM: But this doesn’t mention the inclusion of a nature or a season, which I often hear should be. Is it true they are nlonger mportant? (Even Wikipedia notes that modern haiku only honors the juxtaposition of images and tends toward everyday things.)

DPK: A traditional haiku has a “kigo” or seasonal reference. I believe this is what Agatucci means by an image “suggestive of time and place”. To further cloud the issue, haiku-like poems about everyday life without a nature reference are called senryu. In Japan, there is a big distinction between haiku and senryu.In the US, not so much, mostly because most people writing haiku in English do not know how to distinguish the differences between haiku and senryu.There is also a movement in the haiku community towards gendai haiku, which is more avant garde and experimental, most of which does not include a kigo.

When we start talking about speculative haiku, it gets cloudier. Are we writing speculative haiku, scifaiku, or speculative senryu? I think the answer is all of the above. Some gendai haiku is very close to scifaiku, and the mainstream haiku journals have been publishing poems that many in the speculative community consider to be scifaiku, although the editors of those journals may not realize it.

I tend to use kigo in my scifaiku, so some of my speculative haiku is sometimes more traditional, in all but topic, than some of the gendai haiku being published in the mainstream haiku journals.

I tend to prefer the term “speculative haiku” versus “scifaiku,” but I sometimes use the terms interchangeably.

 

JCM: In commenting about about imagist poems, I think they have rhyming of images, not unlike what one finds in Hebraic poetry. Haiku is imagist poetry, and seems to be more subtle. (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11902-parallelism-in-hebrew-poetry).

DPK: Many of the Imagists in the early 20th Century studied haiku. Many people consider Ezra Pound’s, “In a Station of the Metro,” as one of the first haiku written in English. It is formatted differently. It has a title. But, at its essence, it is a haiku.

 

JCM: Uncertain on whether I should call speculative haiku a form of modern haiku, should one try to maintain the traditional elements, while adding a speculative one? I imagine there could be a need for additional words.

DPK: I prefer speculative haiku that retains the traditional elements. It is the image that puts it into the realm of speculative. About a dozen years ago or more, I had a conversation with the late William Higginson (author of Haiku World, Haiku Seasons, and The Haiku Handbook) regarding speculative haiku. He was thinking that speculative haiku might use keywords, the way traditional haiku uses kigo. For example, “time travel” or “worm hole.”

Around that same time, I was experimenting with a group of poets in writing speculative renku (Japanese linked verse). Part of the rules of renku revolve around having the correct season in a particular link, and so a group of us had a private mailing list to discuss and also write some speculative renku. One of the topics is what does season mean in a science fiction context? So, we were looking at categories of science fiction tropes and classifying them as to “genesis” (which would be spring) or “harvesting” (which would be autumn), etc. Mary Margaret Serpento did a lot of work in this area. Eventually, we published a shisan renku (12 verses) called “Gravity Spool” in an anthology about String Theory, “Riffing on Strings,” Scriblerus Press, 2008. The authors on that project were myself, Mary Margaret Serpento, ushi, oino sakai, assu, and Lucinda Borkenhagen.

But getting back to speculative haiku, I often use regular, established kigo and then juxtapose it against a speculative image, thus retaining the traditional elements of haiku.

 

JCM: Walk us through the creative process. I would guess that it is much more than assembling a collage of images. You can start with what you said in the Michelle Boston interview (July 2014) “Haiku helps you take little mental snapshots of your world.”

DPK: Haiku is part of my journaling process. I like to go on walks in botanical gardens, explore the beaches of Southern California, and hike in the local mountains, and when I do, I always have my writing notebook. Sometimes, I write haiku on the spot, other times I write “half haiku” – either the seasonal aspects of what I am seeing, a list of wildflowers or birds or butterflies, or a few lines describing something I noticed. My notebook might say:

red-whiskered bulbul – 2 in top of tree – 1 had nesting material

And, then afterwards this might become

Valentine’s Day
nesting material
in the bulbul’s beak

Later it might become something else. I might ditch “nesting material” and try to find out what exactly a bulbul builds its nest out of.

Valentine’s Day
the bark strip
in the bulbul’s beak

Or, my mind might shift to a speculative version.

nuclear winter
no bark left
for a bulbul

I never know where my notes will lead me, but my writing notebook (and my photos – I always have a camera with me) is where it all starts. And, the resulting haiku help me remember these moments I experienced even more than a photograph.

Sometimes, I work from prompts, whether a list of season words, or a group like NaHaiWriMo, a facebook group that puts out a daily prompt for haiku. Sometimes, I’ll write a haiku to the prompt, and sometimes it is speculative. A couple of days ago, the prompt was “newfangled” – and I ended up writing about a “new vampire”.

 

JCM: I see that you have a B.A. in mathematics from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. As a physicist, I like to think that we can let our analytial minds play together with our creative minds. How has your poetry benefited from your mathematical background?

DPK: I love juxtaposition and from a mathematical standpoint, some of my haiku writing consists of permutations and combinations, basically grouping images and ideas into sets and comparing them against each other.

 

JCM: I’m impressed with Jim Kacian’s analysis of the 2014 winning poems for Heron’s Nest, he said, “A great many of the poems I didn’t select were outstanding examples of normative haiku. By this I mean they contained juxtaposed images that, in company with one another, resonated; followed the usual structures of brevity, cutting, with that surprise. The poems I selected as Prize Winners and Honorable Mentions share these characteristics as well, and offer, at the same time, something just a bit more. In some instances it is difficult to say what that something more is, other than a feeling of justesse,* but I think it worth an attempt all the same.”

* I had no idea what justesse meant in context of haiku—simply “accurate” falls short. I searched the Internet and found the book “The Contemporary Poetry of France: Eight Studies,” by Michael Bishop, tin which he author describes Phippe Jaccottet’s poetry using that word. I think applies to haiku as well: “it is within this tension, within its dual, reversible optic, that the crucial equilibrium, that special sense of justesse always sought.”

Anyway, what is meant by “normative” haiku?

DPK: I think Jim is talking about the way most published authors in the haiku community are writing haiku, with two images juxtaposed around a cut.He mentions resonance, which we haven’t spoken of yet, because it is difficult to define. The best haiku resonates with the reader on some level, but what resonates for me may not resonate for you. Sometimes, a poet will write a haiku that is written perfectly – it has a season word, it is brief, it doesn’t have any extra words, it has two strong images that juxtapose, and then you read it and appreciate it but it doesn’t linger and invite the reader to explore it further.

Some haiku work on totally different levels and each time you read it, you see something different about it.

Some haiku just become part of you. I love to tell the story of the time I went to Gettysburg a few years ago. It was summer and I was looking at the dry grasses and the monuments and thinking of all of the blood of the soldiers who died there, and then this haiku by Bashō just popped into my head, and I started to cry. I was looking at Gettysburg and seeing/feeling/experiencing exactly what he wrote centuries ago in a totally different part of the world.

summer grasses
all that remains
of a warrior’s dreams

Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

 

JCM: As an editor and reader, I see a lot of cut-up prose passed off as poetry. Is this a problem in poorly written haiku, too; i.e., when one thought broken into three lines.

DPK: Yes, this is a problem in poorly written haiku, too. There are a couple of issues. One is the use of enjambment, which doesn’t really work in a form as short as a haiku. This is also a problem with poets who are determined to write in 5-7-5, even when told it isn’t necessary, and then they pad the lines with unnecessary words to make the count or break the lines oddly, to make the count. English tends to be iambic, so a 4-6-4 haiku is much easier to write. It is possible to write a good 5-7-5 haiku – Patricia Machmiller does it beautifully, but a lot of beginning haiku writers come up with what are essentially statements in 5-7-5 syllables instead of a poem.

 

JCM: Please discuss the single pieces that appear in this Issue—anything about their backstory and craft you’d care to mention.

DPK: “spent lilacs” was written during one of those walks I mentioned earlier. I was at Descanso Gardens, which is in the foothills of Los Angeles County, about 20 minutes from my house.They have a lilac garden there and the week before it had been blooming profusely. However, that day, I was surprised to return and find that most of the blooms were totally spent. But, there was this one little corner of the garden that looked like the entire garden had looked the previous week. So, inspired by Ray Bradbury’s stories of how he looked at a tattoed guy at a circus and saw “the Illustrated Man” or a roller coaster being dismantled on Venice beach which became a dinosaur for his story, “The Fog Horn,” I looked at this corner of the lilac garden and saw a time warp. And then, with poetic license, I changed it from a public garden to “her garden.”

“morning launch” came out of a kigo exercise. I was writing haiku about cherry blossoms for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival haiku contest, and I was just doing my poetic mathematical permutations and combinations thing, where I made a list of different types of cherry blossoms:cherry tree buds, blossoms just opening, new cherry blossoms, pink cherry blossoms, white cherry blossoms, scent of cherry blossoms, cherry blossom rain… and then I wrote a bunch of little two-liners to mix and match against the cherry blossoms to see if anything resonated for me. I wrote some speculative two-liners in that writing session, too, and one of them was “morning launch/of the last ship from earth” and I just loved the way it worked with “cherry blossom rain.”

 

JCM: I tend to write linked haiku, which would be titled. The title can do so much work in the poem. I know it is customary to publish haiku without titles. Would it be taboo to break that tradition and begin titling haiku?

DPK: I like untitled single haiku but feel that sequences and linked-verse should be titled.I have seen poets use titles for speculative haiku. Obviously, going back to Pound, “In a Station of the Metro,” had a title. There is also a tradition in Mexico to title haiku written in Spanish. José Juan Tablada, who is attributed with introducing haiku to poets in Mexico, titled his haiku (http://www.los-poetas.com/a/tabla1.htm#HAIKUS).
That all said, I still prefer speculative haiku to be untitled so that it will be more in tune with contemporary mainstream haiku. My goal for writing speculative haiku is to write haiku that the mainstream haiku community will appreciate as much as the speculative poetry community. That means, I want to write what Jim Kacian called “normative haiku” in your earlier question, just on speculative topics. I don’t want speculative haiku to read like spam haiku or haiku for cats or any of the “cutsie haiku” books that are published in a given year. I want speculative haiku to be taken seriously by the haiku community as well as the speculative community, which means we need to reach for a high standard when writing it.

That said, sometimes if the idea is “too alien” and the science fiction/fantasy/horror aspect of it is too complicated, it may not be possible to write what you need to say in 3 lines. If you are writing a haiku about a planet you invented and no one understands anything about that planet, three lines may not give any space for the reader to enter into the poem. Haiku is more about a conversation between the reader and the writer than other types of poetry.

I think the answer for these situations, where it might not be possible to reduce the poem to three lines without a title or note of explanation, is to write a sequence or a haibun and then title the resulting longer poem.

 

JCM: Please discuss these linked haiku that appear in this Issue—anything about their backstory and craft you’d care to mention.

DPK: I enjoy writing sequences of haiku and have found them to be more appealing in markets that don’t usually publish haiku. I have written a series of haiku sequences with four haiku, one for each season. There are several, written from the point of view of “If Bashō was walking around “insert fantastical place,” what would he see and write about.

I have done a couple of haiku workshops where I took participants on a imaginary ginko. (A ginko, not to be confused with the gingko tree, is a “haiku walk,” where a group of haiku poets go somewhere together, write haiku, then share them together afterwards). For these workshops, I had partipants close their eyes and pretend they were on Mount Olympus or Mars (I selected a place for the workshop) and then write what they see. If I am walking around Mount Olympus or Mars and look carefully at the details, what do I see? What does it smell like? Feel like

The three haiku sequences in this issue, “Bashō After Cinderella,” “Bashō on the Back Road to Camelot,” and “Seasons of a Time Traveler” were written from this perspective. What does spring in Camelot, in the Cinderella story, if I time-traveled someplace, look like? Then, how about summer? Fall? Winter?

“Equations of a Sonata” was obviously inspired by string theory. Even though it is a poem with no association with haiku, I believe its style was influenced by my work in haiku because I’m using juxtaposition, the lines are short, etc.

 

JCM: When you write other forms of poetry, does haiku inform them? For example, I imagine they would be very helpful in writing minimalist poems.

DPK: Yes, I started writing haiku because I thought my biggest flaw at the time as a writer was that I was too wordy. So, I started to economize on words, selecting words with powerful associations, getting rid of words that were unnecessary. Working with haiku and other minimalist poetry is helpful, even when writing longer poetry because you start to realize which words are unnecessary. If I am writing about apples, I don’t need to say “red apples” because most people would assume they are red. However, if I wanted to emphasize that the apples are green, then I would add the adjective. Further more if I am using apples, which are red, I can imply something else is red by simply having it near the apple and the mind makes the association.

As I wrote haiku more and more, I fell in love with this type of poetry and almost write it exclusively these days.

 

JCM: What about the popular Japanese forms, like senryu and others?

DPK: I write senryu as well as haiku, and also dabble in tanka and haibun.

 

JCM: Tell us about your haiku workshop and your moderatoring the Southern California Haiku Study Group.

DPK: In the late 1990’s, I started attending workshops of the Southern California Haiku Study Group, based upon the recommendation of gK, who I knew from the Scifaiku mailing list. Jerry Ball had founded the group and was the moderator at that time. In 2006, he moved to Northern California and I took over as moderator so the group would continue and because I felt that the group had given me so much as far as my growth as a haiku poet and I wanted to help others in the same way.

We meet monthly at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, the 3rd Saturday of every month, starting at 2 pm. Anyone who happens to be in the area is welcome to drop in. We have had surprise visits from haiku poets from places as far away as Wisconsin and New York.

We usually start with a read-around of haiku. I bring several books with me each month (I have a collection of several hundred haiku books and journals – not sure exactly how many – at least 500) and participants can either read one of their haiku or a haiku from one of the books. Then, it can vary. We might have a special presentation, such as the “Haiku of Shiki”, a workshop on some topic such as “sound haiku”, or a writing exercise. We usually conclude with an anonymous haiku workshop, where we workshop participant’s haiku.

I also am doing workshops at Joshua Tree National Park and the Fullerton Arboretum this spring.In January, I became the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America, which means I help facilitate information sharing between the various haiku groups in the state, help publicize their events, and basically am an ambassador for haiku in California.

 

JCM: Tell us about your projects and where we can learn more about your work.

DPK: Most of my projects lately have been more organizational in nature, but I am currently working on a haiku manuscript. It has been almost seven years since I published a chapbook. I can be reached via Facebook and Twitter (@dkolodji). I have a new website at www.deborahpkolodji.com, which I will be adding to as the year progresses. I also have a blog at dkolodji.livejournal.com.

I am planning to attend several haiku conferences this year – the Haiku Canada weekend in Victoria, B.C. in May 2015, as well as Haiku North America in Schenectady, New York in October 2015.

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Haiku

blossomsspent lilacs
the time warp
in her garden

 (First published in Debora’s chapbook, Red Planet Dust (Gromagon Press, 2007)

 

 

morning launch
of the last ship from earth
cherry blossom rain

(First published in Scifaikuest, February 2007 (Debora was the featured poet); title poem for “the last ship from earth,” a trifold published by (Haiku Canada, 2010)

 

 

 

Deborah P Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group and currently serves as the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society in America. She has published over 800 poems in journals such as Star*Line, Strange Horizons, the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mythic Delirium, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron’s Nest, A Hundred Gourds, Rattle, Pearl, and poeticdiversity. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, including one of speculative haiku, “Red Planet Dust” in 2007. She has been anthologized in the Rhysling Anthology, the Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Haiku 21, and Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Forms. Her short stories have appeared in THEMA, Tales of the Talisman, and Everyday Weirdness. She has a memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her radio interview with Lois P. Jones on the Poet’s Café, which aired in Los Angeles in 2010, can be heard on the Timothy Green’s Blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/deborah-p-kolodji/

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Bashō after Cinderella

(i)

a glass slipper
glass-slipperin the middle of the road
spring rain

(ii)

thistles in bloom
village gossip
after the ball

(iii)

pumpkin vine
a mouse remembers
how to neigh

(iv)

fairy dust snow
perfectly-sized boots
for her bare feet

 

 

(First published in Rattle (#38, Tribute to Speculative Poetry, Winter 2012) Haiku iii won the Dwarf Stars Award for 2013 and will be included in the 2015 Nebula Showcase.

 

 

Deborah P Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group and currently serves as the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society in America. She has published over 800 poems in journals such as Star*Line, Strange Horizons, the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mythic Delirium, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron’s Nest, A Hundred Gourds, Rattle, Pearl, and poeticdiversity. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, including one of speculative haiku, “Red Planet Dust” in 2007. She has been anthologized in the Rhysling Anthology, the Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Haiku 21, and Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Forms. Her short stories have appeared in THEMA, Tales of the Talisman, and Everyday Weirdness. She has a memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her radio interview with Lois P. Jones on the Poet’s Café, which aired in Los Angeles in 2010, can be heard on the Timothy Green’s Blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/deborah-p-kolodji/

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Bashō on the Back Road to Camelot

(1)

spring rain
a lady’s silk favor
on a broken lance

(2)

moving line of ants
the sword in the stone
remains still

(3)

autumn wine
from a prison cell
the Grail

(4)

a former queen
prays in the convent
winter wind

 

(First published in Dragons, Knights, and Angels (February 2007))

Excalibur-sword-in-the-stone

 

 

Deborah P Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group and currently serves as the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society in America. She has published over 800 poems in journals such as Star*Line, Strange Horizons, the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mythic Delirium, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron’s Nest, A Hundred Gourds, Rattle, Pearl, and poeticdiversity. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, including one of speculative haiku, “Red Planet Dust” in 2007. She has been anthologized in the Rhysling Anthology, the Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Haiku 21, and Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Forms. Her short stories have appeared in THEMA, Tales of the Talisman, and Everyday Weirdness. She has a memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her radio interview with Lois P. Jones on the Poet’s Café, which aired in Los Angeles in 2010, can be heard on the Timothy Green’s Blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/deborah-p-kolodji/

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Seasons of a Time Traveler

(i)

the long stem
in Mendel’s pea garden
first kiss4-season-tree

(ii)

August heat
we pick the wrong year
to visit Pompeii

(iii)

Poor Richard’s Almanack
a pint of pumpkin ale
with Benjamin

(iv)
endless winter
a woolly mammoth crushes
the time machine
(First published in Mythic Delirium (#29, 2013))

 

 

Deborah P Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group and currently serves as the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society in America. She has published over 800 poems in journals such as Star*Line, Strange Horizons, the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mythic Delirium, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron’s Nest, A Hundred Gourds, Rattle, Pearl, and poeticdiversity. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, including one of speculative haiku, “Red Planet Dust” in 2007. She has been anthologized in the Rhysling Anthology, the Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Haiku 21, and Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Forms. Her short stories have appeared in THEMA, Tales of the Talisman, and Everyday Weirdness. She has a memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her radio interview with Lois P. Jones on the Poet’s Café, which aired in Los Angeles in 2010, can be heard on the Timothy Green’s Blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/deborah-p-kolodji/

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Equations of a Sonata

regarding string theory

darkcelloAnother me
in that time and place
was in sync with you.

Now we move
in different dimensions.

I’m certain
there’s an equation,

an everything-in-the-universe equation,
that explains all.

Newton’s apple falls,
I’m no longer there
to catch it.

Don’t mourn me.

Resonance of the universe
is a cello string

a soloist playing Beethoven,

I’m dancing.

Calculate it

a million ways—flexend6th
on moving fingers,
the click of an abacus

peer through thick glasses
at an engineer’s slide rule,
check his pocket calculator,
write a program for your laptop,
download an app for your i-pad.

The universe keeps spinning,
life unwinds.

 

 

 

 

 

Deborah P Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group and currently serves as the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society in America. She has published over 800 poems in journals such as Star*Line, Strange Horizons, the Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mythic Delirium, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron’s Nest, A Hundred Gourds, Rattle, Pearl, and poeticdiversity. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, including one of speculative haiku, “Red Planet Dust” in 2007. She has been anthologized in the Rhysling Anthology, the Red Moon Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Aftershocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Haiku 21, and Lighting the Global Lantern: A Teacher’s Guide to Writing Haiku and Related Forms. Her short stories have appeared in THEMA, Tales of the Talisman, and Everyday Weirdness. She has a memoir in Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul. Her radio interview with Lois P. Jones on the Poet’s Café, which aired in Los Angeles in 2010, can be heard on the Timothy Green’s Blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/deborah-p-kolodji/

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Weathering

When she asked what the weather was like here,
I sent it to her—
coastal winds to tame her fever,
scent of sea-brine to undo the hospital’s nosegay
of disinfectant and disease.

Days later, when her voice on the phone grew distant
as she said the room was cold, so cold,
I blew across the miles the island sun
brave as a browning sunflower nodding on its stalk.

wiltedsunflowers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandi Leibowitz was born and raised in New York, lived for seventeen years in northern New Jersey, and then thought better of it. She resides in Astoria, Queens. She has a B.A. in English from Vassar College, an M.A. in English from NYU, post-baccalaureate certification in teaching from William Paterson, and an M.L.I.S. from Rutgers. As an elementary-school librarian she sometimes sings the ABC song but promises not to use any more acronyms in this bio. A classical singer and early-music player of recorders and other old instruments, she writes speculative poetry and fiction, which may be read in places like Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling and Luna Station Quarterly. Feel free to visit her on the web at www.sandileibowitz.com.

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Deaamoo’s Passage

Little Bee, Deaamoo, lies in her parting dress; a shade of herself ghosts. One moment she’s bright eyed, the next she’s as blank as black-stone. The frigid forest mirrors her comings and goings. In the night sky clouds mask and unmask, Nee-ba-gee’sis, the moon. A thin veil of ice speaks. Birch branches commune with the falling snow. Safe in a sage-dream, grandmother smiles.

Family surrounds Deaamoo, they’ve come from the purification ceremony at sunset. Charged with life, the room wavers in tobacco, and sage smoke. Spirit breathes. Astral ancestors arrive on the beat of drum and drift of snow. Strands of gray hair escape from her braids. Once, they were black, now, they trail beside her bird-frail form leaving her face unveiled. A withered hand clasps a cowrie shell, mee-ghis, a key to the darkness; clasped in the other, a dream catcher to ward her grandchild’s night. The lodge is empty. The clan comes to her from starry dark, to light the hearth fires. Outside, stars wait. They will guide her through the veil, these bright beacons in a clearer sky. Inside and out are ancient wraiths. Friends surround chanting, drumming softly. Outside in the onyx black the pacugu hoots. A ring of blessed stones marks four directions in the snow. The way west is plain. Gifts for The Great Horned One lay in the snow. Soon, Little Bee will enter the spirit house, between earth and night sky. Owl will lead her over the bridge, keeping her from earth-bound darkness. Grandmother is Iron Woman. She’s helped many under Gee’sis, the sun. Grandmother is good. She can read the glyphs and tells the best jiibay, ghost stories. Tonight, they listen as she tells her last story. The night’s veil thins. Her granddaughter, Aamoo, sits on the bed’s edge hiding sadness behind her hands. “It’s beautiful outside, Grandmother, snow hangs heavy from the balsam pine. The fire is lit and the smoke ghosts upward, showing the way to where Gichi Manidoo waits in the midnight sky.” Grandmother’s eyelids flutter and her breath comes soft as sunlight. The song fades. Deaamoo murmurs, “Ready.” Sons carry her into the dark.

Oh so gently, they place her on furs and cover her with the pitch-black skin of a bear. “Tell me the Ladder story, Child.” Deaamoo whispers “lift the veil.” Surrounded by loved ones, Aamoo speaks, “Long ago when the sun set on an old one’s life, a shining spirit would come down the vine ladder, a messenger from Manidoo would take each soul into the night sky to the fork in the Milky Way.” Stars fill Grandmother’s eyes.

Earthly sounds fade into dark as Grandmother’s soul rises through snowflakes. Her husk, a lifted veil, releases her to the blue half-moon’s winter night. Like the morning sun or evening moon; she ascends up the ladder. She ghosts.

smoke

Deborah Guzzi is a healing facilitator specializing in Japanese Shiatsu and Reiki. She writes for Massage and Aroma Therapy Magazines. She travels the world to expand her knowledge of healing and seeking writing inspiration. She has walked the Great Wall of China, seen Nepal (during the civil war), Japan, Egypt (two weeks before ‘The Arab Spring’), Peru, and France during December’s terrorist attacks. Her poetry appears in Magazines in the UK, Exsistere in Canada, Tincture in Australia, Cha:Asian Literary Review, China, Greece, and Travel by the Book, Eunoia, Liquid Imagination, The Wilderness Literary Review, Illumen, and others in the USA. 

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Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

House of the Blind

They see what they want to see
They scrawl into dark places in search of light
They are scribes of a promised rainbow
That so far hasn’t appeared after the rain
Still they hope, still they believe

They know what they know
Their faith is a thing hoped for
A reality not yet beheld
They revel in meaning
Although, not clear to the world

They are partners of spirit and blood
They perceive things, they hear things
They touch things, they taste things
Their senses are sharpen to behold signs
They belch at scientific reasoning

Their king is not of this earth
Their gathered voices sing like church bells.
To a phantom on high
They debate if it is male or female, black or white
They war over its true name

They see what they want to see
They have candles where there hearts should be
Their souls are wicks of flame
They believe these wicks can never be snuffed out
They sing in their pews in a collective voice

They see more than humanly possible
They see with stained glass pupils
They see with irises of paper windmills
Turning with hands clasped together
Skin cathedrals arched towards the sky

Now I see

Touched_by_His_Noodly_Appendage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marchell Dyon is a thirty- nine year old disabled poet. She believes her disability has inspired her creative spark. Her poetry has been published in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Blue Lake Review, A Little Poetry, Medusas’ Kitchen, The Stray Branch, Strange Horizons, Mused Bella Online, and Convergence Literary Journal. Her latest work in forthcoming in Torrid Literature Journal 2015. 

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