Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Vessels

by Anne Carly Abad

narrated by Lourdes Abad

vessels4

Capillaries spider-veined into the viewing panel
like the ink he spilled on his sketch of skyline:
Blood vessels, buzzed the android operator

of the 3D printer: Cellular globs floated in flesh,
like the bubbles their children loved to blow:
epidermis, with some fat. He was no expert.

His wife’s new lips modeled after popular
symmetries. She would wear them
and he would learn to mold his kiss.

Leave them be, he told her
long before the operation. She insisted
he didn’t understand, but he did

and she did not see it was his failure.
He couldn’t make her see herself beautiful
no matter how long or how deep

he kissed her, she’d call her body hideous
and print his love on her skin
to assure herself he would never leave.

BIO: Anne Carly Abad recently placed in the Diogen Autumn Contest for Haiku, Senryu, Tanka & Haiga. Her work has appeared or will appear in Dreams & Nightmares, Strange Horizons, and Ares Magazine. Find out more about her at http://the-sword-that-speaks.blogspot.com/

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

For the Love of Certain Spaces

by Jane Ellen Glasser

The moon’s watermark for-the-love-of-certain-spaces-2
on a brightening sky,
highways that fall away
to the horizon, a dirt trail
beneath arched trees,
avenues lined in the airy
giants of Australian pines,
woodlands glazed in ice,
a roadside intoxicated
with poppies, wetlands
crowned with duckweed
and the yellow fists
of spadderdock, islands
tremulous with wings,
a shoreline’s give and take
over which a pelican
pulls a string of pelicans,
the fifty blues of the ocean,
a solitary cabin beside
a scribbling stream,
the black snake
of a mountain pass,
a cave’s musky breath,
dusk’s descending veils,
on an evening flight
from 3,000 feet
the fallen constellations
of city lights, pressing
down in the pure dark
of the countryside
the brilliant stars.

BIO: Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Georgia Review, Haydens Ferry Review and Poetry Northwest. Her poems have garnered numerous awards from the Irene Leache Society, Puddingstone, and the Poetry Society of Virginia, and she has been recognized for outstanding articles on teaching poetry that were featured in Virginia English Bulletin and English Journal. In the past she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. A first collection of her poetry, Naming the Darkness, with an introduction by W. D. Snodgrass, was issued by Road Publishers in 1991. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005, and her award-winning book, Light Persists, published by Tampa University Press in April 2006, received an honorable mention in the 2007 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. Her chapbook On the Corner of Yesterday, published in 2010, was followed by The Long Life, which won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest 2011. Her latest collection The Red Coat appeared from FutureCycle Press in 2013.

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Your Dark Angel

by Robert Frazier

your-dark-angel
Your dark angel swims in blue lightning
Through the ice fields of your dream

Kisses heat waves into your slack lips
And brings sight to your blind core

She whispers sin from every speaker
A suggestion you can almost hear

Speaks jihad from the wasteland
Of numberless television news clips

She screams fire from the air raid sirens
In a whitewash of static hiss

She watches you from the sky drones
Maps your course through the day

Peeks at you through all lenses
Mimics your moves like a shadow

She blinks from the LED screens
With undecipherable error messages

She paints hidden directives
On the periphery of your vision

Your dark angel divines your probables
Unravels massive streams of binary

Parses your red truths
Unravels the never-has-been

Your dark angel knows you
Like no other will ever ever know you

BIO: Robert Frazier is the author of eight books of poetry, and a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry. He has won an Asimov’s Reader Award and has been on the final ballot for a Nebula Award for fiction. His books include Perception Barriers, The Daily Chernobyl, and Phantom Navigation (2012). His 2002 poem, “A Crash Course in Lemon Physics,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His long poem, “Wreck-Diving the Starship,” was a runner-up for a 2011 Rhysling Award. Recent works have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dreams & Nightmares, and Strange Horizons.

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Red Truths

by Robert Frazier

red-truths
Speaking strictly for me
In that storm during Martian summer
On the flanks of Olympus Mons
I felt a definite sea change
Now I’m caught in your undertow

Dark dust battered our faceplates
While the syrups of our imperiled souls
Co-mingled so sweetly that day
Our voices statically whispering the verity
Of our circumstance in our heads

Now you’re lost in the North Polar Basin
Out of radio contact
I leave the lights in the air locks
Permanently on full burn
And await your return

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

How We Happened

by Jane Ellen Glasser

how-we-happened1
You arrived like a letter forwarded to a wrong address,
like a dog’s nose to the ground seeking its way home,
like the last peach on a tree, or a stone skipped across
water to land safely in the palm of a leaf. You came

out of a seeming nowhere like a slow-developing sheet
of film; like a fledgling, fanning the air from the lip
of its nest; like the sun, at day’s end, content to bleed
into a purpled horizon. Like a bet decided on the flip

of a coin, Heads, you called. And I answered, the way
mourning doves volley songs through a stand of pines,
a bounced ball returns to a child’s hand, or a stray
shadows a boy’s heart to a door. Like a trumpet vine

to a hummingbird, I invited you in. Stay! I said,
Stay like a rock washed smooth by a river. And you did.

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Erasure

by JD DeHart

erasure

Errors so easily creep their way in;
the floating article, the misspelled term,
the vines of human frailty.
It is almost too sublime the way
the eraser slides in, his silver hair,
shadow and sunlight suit, gesturing
a monochromatic pantomime.
Soon the evidence will melt away,
wax withering under a powerful wick.

BIO: JD DeHart teaches English in East Tennessee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Illumen, Star*Line, Randomly Accessed Poetics, and Manic Fervor among other publications, and has been a guest editor for Z-composition.

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Syzygy

by Joshua Gage

syzygy The moan inside your throat is a constellation
that guides my lips, my tongue. Here is the shore
of your neck, your shoulder, the small dark islands
of your nipples where the night descends in storm.

Come to me naked, hips a swollen moon
pulled in orbit around my waist. Let tides
rise. Let waves flood the sand dunes
of our skin. Let the boats of our villages capsize.

Let me lightning your heavens. Let me streak your sky
with the thousand comets of my burning kisses.
Let me burst a thousand meteorites
through your atmosphere to spray your crust.

I fall in retrograde and drag the cosmos
behind until we tremble into dust.

BIO: Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland, His first full-length collection, breaths, is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. His most recent collection, Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse, is available on Poet’s Haven Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle.

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Introductions, Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Introduction to Silver Blade Poetry May 2014

by John C. Mannone

As this issue evolved, a theme emerged, which touched many aspects of love and life—there’s the love for one’s friend, a mate, nature, and life itself. Our Featured Poet, Robert Frazier, opens with a poem (Imageography) that speculates on the mind of Albert Einstein; it’s not a love poem (unless you count my love of physics), but it reminds me of something this great physicist once said: “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Robert Frazier (Nantucket, MA) sets a dark stage (Your Dark Angel) with what he says has “a beatnik cadence a la Howl or Ferlinghetti,” which segues into the plaintive poem on Mars (Red Truths). Jane Ellen Glasser (Lighthouse Point, FL) follows with the first of her two poems (For the Love of Certain Spaces). It is a wonderful list poem speaking of a love of “certain places” that nature has given us. JD DeHart (Cleveland, TN) presents a poem (Erasure) that uses an interesting metaphor. It is a short poem, but powerful. Love has no bounds. Anne Carly Abad (Manilla, Phillipines) proves this with her compelling poem (Vessels). The word syzygy means a conjunction of three astronomical objects, among other things, like Joshua Gage (Brecksville, OH) shows in his love sonnet (Syzygy), which approaches the Spensurian form. There is more than skilled slant rhymes in this poem. The selection closes with a second poem from Glasser, another modern sonnet—love poem (How We Happened). I think it makes for a happy ending to a great selection of poems from some very talented poets. Enjoy.

John C. Mannone

Poetry Editor

Poetry in this issue:

Interview with Featured Poet Robert Frazier

Imageography by Robert Frazier

Your Dark Angel by Robert Frazier

Red Truths by Robert Frazier

For the Love of Certain Spaces by Jane Ellen Glasser

Erasure by JD DeHart

Vessels by Anne Carly Abad

Syzygy by Joshua Gage

How We Happened by Jane Ellen Glasser

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Imageography

by Robert Frazier

imageography
There are the wild-hair ones
Ones with glasses, the pipe, the violin
Riding that bicycle (with cast shadow)
The posed hand to the chalkboard
And posed seated with hands clasped
The madcap tongue photo
On the beach (in trunks not hat)
The aged and worn math genius
The youthful man looking a bit like Poe
Or later in Bern like Sellers as Clouseau
With cousin/bride Elsa (in her hat)
The official 1921 Nobel portraits
Accepting a U.S. citizenship certificate
The ‘Dead at 76’ headline head shot
His brain stolen from the Smithsonian
But the telling image for me
Is Einstein standing in his study
Books askew on the shelves
The desk a mound of paperwork
His finger and thumb to his chin
Musing as if he’d misplaced a pen
In the chaos of text and symbol
Or lost a phrase of pure physics
Perhaps momentarily
Perhaps from a misconnection
In the all-fired synaptic unity
Of his complicated memory field
He seems most human then
Most at peace in a universe
He reimagined

(First published in Strange Horizons, 12/19/11)

Published by Associate Editor on May 12, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 22, Issue 22 Poetry, Poetry

Interview with our Featured Poet Robert Frazier

by John C. Mannone

Robert Frazier

Robert Frazier is the author of eight previous books of poetry, and a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry. He has won an Asimov’s Reader Award and been on the final ballot for a Nebula Award for fiction. His books include PerceptionBarriers, TheDailyChernobyl, and Phantom Navigation (2012). His 2002 poem “A Crash Course in Lemon Physics” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Recent works have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, F&SF, Dreams & Nightmares, and Strange Horizons. His long poem “Wreck-Diving the Starship” was a runner-up for a 2011 Rhysling Award.

Robert Alexander Frazier (1951-), born in Ayer, Massachusetts, is an American writer of speculative poetry and fiction, as well as an impressionist painter on Nantucket Island. He freelances as a graphic designer and currently serves at the Artists Association of Nantucket as their Curator of Exhibitions.

While at the University of Iowa, Frazier attended courses in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has also attended the Clarion Workshop (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and the Sycamore Hill Writer’s Workshop.

His first science fiction story, “Across Those Endless Skies,” appeared in In the Field of Fire (1987). He has won the Rhysling Award three times: for Best Long Poem in 1994, and for Best Short Poem in 1980 and 1989. In 1984, Frazier edited the landmark anthology of SF poetry Burning With A Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic (Owlswick Press).

He is a founding member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and a two-time past editor of Star*Line. In 2005, the Science Fiction Poetry Association named him a Grand Master.

Nominated numerous times for the Rhysling Poetry Award, he has collaborated with another Grand Master, Bruce Boston, on a long poem, “Chronicles of the Mutant Rain Forest,” which was voted by the magazine Locus in their Online Poetry Poll as the “Best All-Time Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror Poem” in 2006.

Some of the more recent books are:

Exiled on Main Street (The AAN Press, 2011)

The Waterfront Artists, Painters Who Changed Nantucket (The AAN Press, 2012)

Phantom Navigation (cover by Margaret Fox, Dark Regions Press, 2012)

(Excerpted from Wikipedia; more details found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frazier_(writer) )

_________________________________________________________________________

John C. Mannone (JCM): Thank you Bob for taking the time to do this interview. As anyone can see from your bio, you are a recognized force in speculative poetry. I am going to ask the unaskable, and perhaps the unanswerable question, “What is poetry?” Perhaps at least some qualities what you visualize a good poem should possess, especially in contradistinction to prose.

Robert A. Frazier (RAF): Ah, a poem is just something you call a poem. To paraphrase Damon Knight, you crank the handle and it goes “ding.” Also, I’m in the camp that believes you have to ask how does a poem mean, not what does it mean. From another angle, there are certain differences in writing. I see non-fiction as presenting as many facts as are necessary. Fiction builds as much storyline as is necessary. Poetry does neither. Poetry is about stating little and implying more, about creating ripples. I find that when I begin a fiction or non-fiction piece, I feel that slicing buzz in the gut, that impetus. But prolonged work can dull that feeling. When I end a poem (save for perhaps a bit of rewrite), I still have that buzz going. I write poetry like I paint en plein air. I get it done, no matter the length, in one blast.

JCM: Now let’s focus on speculative poetry. Do you find unique challenges relative to other types of poems?

RAF: Actually, I find working in speculative poetry to be a liberating experience. I write a good deal on straight science subjects. I write poetry with fantastic elements (fantasy, dark/horror, science fiction, etc.). I do surreal poetry, and the odd experimental form like concrete poetry. All these forms, if you like, seem to find a home in the speculative small press or pro markets. Even the occasional confessional poem, involving geologic time on a hike in Maine or body surfing through bioluminous waves or spotting Halley’s Comet with my daughter, to cite three examples, can slip in there. That’s a wide fairway to hit off the tee.

Restrictions from publications like poem length or subject matter are always a challenge to publication, yet the quantitative numbers of speculative markets continue to stay healthy, though not robust.

I should note that one unsolvable challenge concerns the label science fiction poetry. Poetry and fiction in the same handle…ouch. Who thought that could work? It begs the necessity of presenting a narrative poem. Yet there’s plenty of excellent science fiction in poetry that relies on other voices besides the narrative voice, other arcs besides a character arc.

JCM: We are delighted to share these poems with the readers: “Red Truths,” “Your Dark Angel,” and “Imageography.” Take one (or more) of these poems and give us the backstory—not only the genesis of the poem, but also some of its salient crafting features. (I can’t help it, it’s the teacher in me.)

RAF: Is their an angel watching over you? I ask that question in the context of the future, or perhaps it’s the present, in terms of privacy. We have cams in the cities, phone calls secretly archived, financial data, camera drones shrinking in size. All of this gathers information on us. But we’re not as concerned as perhaps we should be, in part because we know so much data overwhelms the ability to collate, compress, comprehend. But what if. What if something, some entity develops on its own. What if an angel, in the cloud perhaps, records everything about you. So “Your Dark Angel” is cautionary, and I found the voice that worked for me, that transferred that caution, was a fast breathless repetitive voice. In a beatnik cadence a la Howl (Ginsberg) or He (Ferlinghetti) or The Teeth Mother Naked at Last (Bly).

JCM: What an honor it must be to be a Grand Master. Can you tell us a little of the process on how you became one? Does it lead to a self-imposed pressure every time you submit work?

RAF: Every few years there is an eligibility year designated by the Science Fiction Poetry Association (there’s the term again) for voting on a Grand Master. Someone who has contributed to the speculative poetry field in a number of ways. I believe a member has to put forth a candidate, and back up their nomination with bio material, biblio material, and citations of their involvement.

In my case, I’ve guest-edited magazines, written and presented history articles on speculative poetry, illustrated poems, edited some publications, edited the anthology Burning With a Vision, and have generally been involved from a bunch of angles. Also, I’ve either edited, co-edited, or done graphic design for Star*Line for the majority of its 35+ years as the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Somewhere in there I have a family and a career in fine arts. And I sleep, though not as well as I used to. But then who does?

JCM: Cover art is such an important part of marketing strategy. What can you recommend to the readers who have a collection of poems to publish (either self-publish or publish through a small independent press)? Some printers want to choose the cover art for one’s book (I think CreateSpace). Any caveats? I noticed that you, an accomplished artist and graphical designer, don’t always do your own cover art. Perhaps you can enlighten us. (I think I understand, but I am only guessing. Having done lots of electrical baseline calculations for nuclear power plants, one would think I’d easily deal with my own house wiring. Yet I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps we’re just too close to our own environs and want a distant “eye.”)

RAF: A book line usually has a look, per se, that makes it easier for a potential reader to recognize the content, especially when genre labels are attached. So the publisher has to consider that. If you are marketing a poetry collection, you should wait until the publisher commits before you address the cover. Then you can make a case for an illustrator you favor, or a specific image that you know is available. It is much harder to sell a book when the illustration(s) are a part of the package you are submitting. Why apply limitations?

That said, I prefer added variety in a book. Cover-wise, I have been more than lucky in my suggestions. Berkeley Poets Cooperative seemed pleased to accept my suggestion for a cover drawing by David Macauley (The Way Things Work, Motel of the Mysteries) to grace Perception Barriers (1987). And it helps to have friends on Nantucket who are artists. My buddy Margaret Fox did a superb, surreal cover for my Dark Regions collection Phantom Navigation (2012). DR loved it so much that they asked her for more work.

I’ve wired a two-way switch before, but I’ll stick to brushes and keyboards, thank you.

JCM: Though I suspect it is an automatic thing for a poet who is a visual artist as well, is there anything you can share about the process of creating a poem stimulated by a visual image or vice versa. I thoroughly enjoy creating ekphrastic poems, but I’m not sure I can explain the process. The value in understanding it just a little is to optimize the result. Knowing how to look at a picture or a piece of art might help. Your thoughts?

RAF: I’ve been taken with photographs of Albert Einstein for a few years now. Written some poems that used the photos or one photo as an ekphrastic kick-start. When I find a new image in a book or online, I revisit my curiosity about a life extraordinarily lived. Still haven’t tackled a piece that starts from a photo of AE’s brain in a jar. Eventually I will. I guess I need to research more about pathologist Thomas Harvey and that part of the, ah, convoluted story. I’m big on research.

I feel that consciously picking out a stunning Dali to use as a poem starter would be a recipe for weak poetics, unless you are forced in a workshop situation, but if one of his paintings consistently haunts you, for whatever reason, then that is likely the one to stimulate a successful poem. I’ve gone back to Isle of the Dead, a series of paintings by Böcklin ca. 1880-86, several times for inspiration.

For sources I recommend some of the genre artists: Richard Powers’ spectacular surreal Ballantine covers in the 1950s and 60s. The line art of Ian Miller. Ed Emshwiller’s magazine covers. Big technology art of John Berkey or Frank Paul. Mike Whelan is impeccable at fantasy. As is Trina Schart Hyman or J.K. Potter.

JCM: You write about science in much of your poetry, yet you don’t paint realistic works. How do you reconcile the left-brain with the right-brain?

Well, my father taught cryptography for Army Security. This was after working with the earliest forerunners of the computer, including Turing’s bombe when Dad was at Bletchley Park during WWII. My mother was a librarian and an oil painter who studied with master impressionist Emile Albert Gruppé of the Rockport School as a teen. I like to say, the mystical science of deciphering gibberish into plain text somehow meshes with a penchant for fanciful imagery in my poetry.

JCM: We are well into the new year, but I’ve found myself reflecting on my 2014 writing goals. What can you share about setting goals and how have you faired this year in that respect?

RAF: Not well. I’ve spent much of this year curating a museum exhibition for the Nantucket Historical Association, a big organization on the island. It’s been eating up my time. As well, I have a solo exhibition in July. I’ve gone back to using the palette knife for landscapes, employing techniques I learned from my mother, a true professional. But I’ll get on with it by fall. It was a decade between poetry collections for me when Phantom Navigation came out. I almost have enough good stuff for another collection.

JCM: Tell us about your successful writing projects; entice our readers so that we’d want to rush out and purchase them.

RAF: Good luck finding them. The art history books are local and sold out. The poetry books are all out of print, save for Phantom Navigation. If you can find the book of novellas I did with my dear friend Lucius Shepard, Nantucket Slayrides with a Potter cover, I have one in that. High Fantastic, Colorado stories edited by Steve Tem, collects one of my favorites, “How I Met My First Wife, Juanita”. Anything in The Mutant Rain Forest, the shared world I invented and habitated often with Bruce Boston and, for one novelette, Lucius.

JCM: Tell us about your new writing projects.

RAF: I’m working on a story set on a badly terraformed Mars that I find engaging, but I haven’t seriously worked in fiction for a long time. It’s been pretty much poetry for years. I was blocked on writing poems in 2007-08, but I’ve refound my muse. We’ll see if my prose comes back.