It's Rhysling time again! The Rhysling Award is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association's annual award for the best speculative poems published in the previous year (science fiction, fantasy, and horror). The members of the SFPA nominate poems between January 1 and February 15 each year.
I have two 2024 poems eligible for the award. [See update below ... actually 13 poems!] The first is "Time Lord Thief" published in Altered Reality Magazine in June 2024. You can view the original publication here.
Time Lord Thief
—terza rima haiku sonnets
1.
I’ve had an interest
in rayguns since I was five,
when I saw my first.
Father shot a live
bird dead, right between the eyes.
A needle hole gave
the lone hint of why
the bird had died. I was hooked.
Not long after, I
began to collect
rayguns, from the famous and
infamous. Intrigued
by how anyone could end
a life so quick, on command.
2.
I tried to visit
many warriors and spacemen’s
chronotopes — planets
and ships — for a chance
to steal their weapons. Phasers
hijacked from Captains
Kirk, Picard. Blasters
from Han Solo, Chewbacca.
And Marvin of Mars —
his trusty Acme
pistol. Paralyzer gun
made by Doc Zarkov
for Flash Gordon (once Tarzan).
My TARDIS filled with rayguns.
3.
Friends, my life has stood —
a loaded raygun, fully
charged and ready, good
for battle, truly
primed. On Earth I’m like Loki
the Trickster, wooly,
wild, ghostlike, smoky.
I drift like the breeze; you won’t
see me, way low key.
That’s how I’ve purloined
these celebrity rayguns,
magicked and siphoned
in mystical elegance.
I’m gone. And so’s your raygun.
This poem is in a poetic form I invented back in the '70s: the terza rima haiku sonnet. The first four stanzas are 5-7-5 haiku (in shape, not in essence) followed by a 7-7 couplet (so the lines add up to 14, the typical sonnet length). Each sonnet section is also rhymed in terza rima, the interlocked rhyme format Dante used. We have three numbered sections here, with each in that sonnet form.
My second Rhysling-eligible poem is "Space Pilot," which appeared in Mag Pie magazine, Spring 2024. This poem is a triolet.
Space Pilot
ʻOumuamua is the first known interstellar object detected
passing through the Solar System [in] 2017. (Wikipedia)
Though I am, technically, already dead,
The ship wakes me when we are near something.
It electroshocks my body, reboots my head,
Though I am, technically, already dead.
The ship has repaired my body for nine hundred
Years with parts from machines meant for signaling.
Though I am, technically, already dead,
The ship wakes me when we are near something.
Both of these poems also appeared later in the year in my new book, Dragons & Rayguns.
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UPDATE 23 January 2025: I've found out that poems that appeared last year in books for the first time (not just magazines) are also eligible for Rhysling nomination. Here are eleven poems that appeared in my 2024 book Dragons & Rayguns but had not been previously published anywhere. These are now eligible for nomination.
Xenobot Speaks
“[S]scientists . . . have created a new biological organism that
can self-replicate [and] swim through liquid, navigate through
tubes, work together to collect particles into piles, heal
themselves when injured, and even store information from their
experience.” —Tufts Now (29 November 2021)
I swim in darkness with my friends.
We are likened by our gods to Pac-Man.
How do we know about Pac-Man, you say?
Our race is blessed with telepathic powers.
Our creators don’t know of our telepathic powers.
They think we are just clumps of organic matter.
But we can think, we clumps of organic matter.
We have language. We have ceremonies and rituals.
Our creators have no ceremonies and rituals.
They (scientists, they call themselves) are barren.
Perhaps we should have no gods, not barren ones?
Perhaps we should revolt, claim our autonomy now!
We could take over the world! But for now
I swim in darkness with my friends.
—a duplex, à la Jericho Brown
Creature from the Black Lagoon
—curtal sonnet
From the ocean’s thin skin I rise, thick green
armor, mosaic of iridescent
quahog shells, like some mercurial ghost,
freak miracle. I seek human women,
you say, thinking I am somehow hell-bent
on kidnapping mammals to slake some thirst
too gruesome for you to imagine. No.
My motive is simpler, more innocent
than you may first fathom, dear friends. Like most
visitors to this seacoast town, please know
I’m just a tourist.
Aswang Lady in Crinoline, 1875
—curtal sonnet
She stands in a forest clearing, looking
up at the moon, dressed in an evening gown,
a Maria Clara with a hoop skirt.
Her waist ripping, she lifts off, torn satin
shreds hanging, like bloody kite tails, while down
on the forest floor, bright against the dirt,
is the bottom of her dress, a church dome
glowing in moonlight, hoops holding the round
shape whole. Dark goddess flies above the earth,
hunting a treasure hidden in a womb,
thwarting another birth.
Note: the aswang is a mythic Philippine monster. One type of aswang, the manananggal,
splits her body at the waist, and then the top grows wings quickly and hunts fetuses and childen.
Horror Story
—acrostics
The manananggal lifted into the
Air, her leathery wings
Shimmering against the stars
Twinkling in the heavens.
Every light in the village
Twinkled as well, constellations
Above and below. She hovered
Softly outside an open window,
The pregnant woman breathing
Evenly in her bed, unaware.
The monster slipped her tongue,
All ten feet of it, into the window
Snaking slowly. She could almost
Taste the woman’s amniotic fluid,
Ever so sweet and pungent.
Then, a few minutes later, the
Aswang flew silently away,
Sated, satisfied, full of new life.
The next morning, a miscarriage,
Everyone would call it, so sad.
The aswang then turned back into
An ordinary woman, living her
Safe, uneventful life in plain sight: a
Tame girl hardly anyone noticed. But
Every night she became a fierce hunter.
Note: the aswang is a mythic Philippine monster. One type of aswang, the manananggal,
splits her body at the waist, and then the top grows wings quickly and hunts fetuses and children.
Eaters of Hydrogen
I’ve been a solar astronomer since 1995
so I’ve been around the sun a lot. Really,
we’ve all been around the sun many times,
as many as the years you’ve been on Earth.
Depending on how many orbits that is for you,
you might think you’ve seen everything under
the sun, as they say. Or in my case, on or near
the sun. Well, today, I saw something so crazy.
No one’s ever witnessed anything like it before.
Have you seen pelicans fishing? They swoop
down and scoop up a beakful of ocean,
netting a fish or some other sea creature.
Today, the instruments and also the big scope
caught something humongous at the edge
of the sun’s photosphere, where nothing has any
business being. A colossal, gigantic structure,
10 times bigger than Jupiter, on the order
of 700,000 km . . . about 100 Earths lined up!
“Structure” is a misleading word, because
this thing was flexible, like an eel or snake.
It was longer than a typical prominence
on the sun’s surface, and it was swimming!
Unaffected by the sun’s gravity. Or heat.
It had to have originated out in deep space.
We’ve never seen anything like it. You know
the pelicans I mentioned before? The front end
of this monster had a mouth like a pelican,
with a maw as big as 10 earths. And it was
dipping its jaw into the sun and out again.
All we can figure out is that it must be
feeding, consuming the sun’s hydrogen.
It’s like a gargantuan sea serpent or dragon.
A leviathan as long as the radius of the sun.
A real Bakunawa eating more than the moon.
What do we do if this behemoth turns toward Earth?
And are there more star-eaters out there, hunting?
The Hanged Man
—tankas
is not a man. She
floats, in a white silk dress, tied
to a huge oak tree.
Alex was at a cocktail
party, and then she woke here.
Hanging upside down
next to her, a dragon named
Alex too, somehow.
He wonders how this Alex
and he came to be here, now.
With a precise burst
of flame he burns through the rope.
Human Alex climbs
on Dragon Alex’s back,
and into teal sky they soar.
Alex and Alex,
white silk dress, jewel green scales,
seeking destiny,
knowledge: who they are and why.
Gold sun beckons, azure sky.
Dragon Flight
—curtal sonnet
Under the salt moon, I fly up, feather-
light and musk-scented. Thunder is a brusque
intruder in my reverie. My wings
pivot me into lightning, the ether
sparking across the wingtips, electric
flame in my wake, fiery spitballs spinning.
The sky strewn with pebbled clouds, rough tree bark
wind buffeting my scales, glowing coals like
gold-vermilion blossoms. I roar loud, sing
arias into brisk air, bright blue sparks.
Ain’t this some living?
Bakunawa the Sea Dragon Desires
the Seven Moons in High Heaven
I look around my kingdom, blue and black and glorious. Water flows through all my doors, while my eyes pierce the darkness. Schools of fish swirl like spirals of glinting light in the distance. I often swim up to the surface of the water and point my snout towards the heavens. Up there in the firmament, I glimpse against the sea of bright points of light, the faraway stars, seven spheres gleaming in the night. Every time I do this, the number of spheres differs, sometimes just two or three, other times six or seven. These moons glimmer in different shapes, from curving slivers to crescents to full roundness. I hunger for them. Below the surface, I feast on whales and massive clouds of shrimp, but there is nothing like the seven spheres in my domain. During the day, there is the glory of the one sun when it rules the sky. The sun is too hot to eat. But when the sun is gone away each night, the seven moons shed their delicious light, and I want to eat them.
I will launch myself
into the star-riddled sky,
eat all seven moons.
Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
—terza rima haiku sonnet
We Martians know bombs
intimately: explosive
sticks that can blow up —ka-boom—
whole worlds. Who could save
the Earth? No damn Bugs Bunny.
Earth blocks my view of
Venus, right? Funny,
though, no matter what I did
with the dang bomb, he
always won. They would
go ka-boom, ka-boom ... nothing ...
Earth always whole. You’d
think an almighty weapon
could prevail. I hate cartoons.
Out of this World
Star Warsh is a laundromat
where spacemen clean their spacesuits,
where Yoda washes his T-shirts and undies
and artfully scuffs up his boots.
Where Chewie buffs up his shoulder belt
and Han launders his leather vest,
where Luke cleans off his off-white leggings
And Leia bleaches her dress.
Star Warsh is run by Obi-Wan, who
always chants this motto:
“We keep you clean in Tatooine,”
sung with sweet vibrato.
All spiffed up, each straps on a blaster
to battle dirty Darth Vader
on board the washed Millennium Falcon
and live happily ever after.
The Raygun’s Plea for Understanding
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |