Posts Tagged ‘Featured Poet’

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Main Features, Poetry

Living in a World of Giants

Bruce Boston

living-in-a-world-of-giants

When the Giants come
striding across our borders,
indifferent to our predictions,
immune to the ingenuity
of our finest technologies,
showing no mercy or regret,
we are helpless before them.

The Giant Wind roars
with irresistible force,
crushing trees and houses,
leaving us without power
in the depth of night

The Giant Rain beats
steadily against the land,
swelling rivers beyond
their banks, flooding
our towns and our lives.

Earth, the greatest Giant
of them all, shakes violently,
toppling buildings and skyways,
sending towering mountains
of ocean rushing against
our shores to raze and
decimate entire cities.

Time and again these Giants
rage through our world,
having their way with us,
indifferent to our forecasts,
immune to the gimmicks
of our human technologies,
showing no pity or remorse,
making sure we remember
how circumstantial we are.

Bruce Boston lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon, and the ghosts of two cats. He is the author of fifty books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener’s Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has appeared in countless publications, most visibly in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase. One of the leading genre poets for more than a quarter century, Boston has won the Bram Stoker Award for Poetry, the Asimov’s Readers Award, and the Rhysling Award (SFPA), each a record number of times. He has also received a Pushcart Prize for fiction and the Grandmaster Award of the SFPA. He will be Poet Guest of Honor at the 2013 Bram Stoker Awards/World Horror Con to be held in New Orleans. For more information visit www.bruceboston.com.

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 20, Issue 20 Stories, Main Features, Poetry

For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets

Bruce Boston

If you’ve heard the stellar vox humana
the untuned ear takes for static,

if you’ve kissed the burning eyelids
of god and seized upon the moon’s

reflection, disjointed and backwards,
in the choppy ink of some alien sea,

then you know how sleek and fleshy,
how treacherous, the stars can become.

While the universe falls with no boundary,
you and I sit in a cafe of a port city

on a planet whose name we’ve forgotten:
the vacuum is behind us and before us,

the spiced ale is cool and hallucinogenic.
Already the candle sparkles in our plates.

(First appeared in Asimov’s SF Magazine, April 1984, Rhysling Award 1985)

Published by Karl Rademacher on July 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 20, Issue 20 Poetry, Main Features, Poetry

Visions of the Blue Clone

Bruce Boston

The first of her
came to me on the first night.
She was a woman of mystery
who sang the blues.

The second of her
came to me on the second night.
She had a history
like no other.

The third of her
came to me on the third night.
She was bright and cheery
and full with the fire
that makes life.

The fourth of her
came to me on the fourth night.
The fire was catastrophic.
The blue rains came down
and our wooden ark settled
on a rocky promontory.

The fifth of her
came to me on the fifth night.
We embraced as lovers,
like eagles in an aerie
far above the drenched desert

The sixth of her
came to me on the sixth night.
We entered the star ways
and jaunted faster than light
to her blue sun.

On the seventh night
the six plus one of us rested,
lying between cool sheets
fashioned from the blue
universe of our flesh.

(First appeared in the author’s collection Shades Fantastic, 2006)