those tiny red eyes
Happy almost-Labor Day!
My poem "Olympia" is in the September/October issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. It begins:
Time is only distance. I’m choosing a flight
for your funeral, shuffling those tiny red eyes.
If I pick the right flight, the half-house
on pilings is whole...
This is a strange poem to label as science fiction poetry, because everything in it is real: the house on pilings is (was?) a real house, the speaker in the poem is me. Only the unshuffling of time is fictional—though that feeling is real, too.
I first wrote this poem for my grandmother, Jeanette Whitcher, and in the years since it has accumulated other layers—there's grief in the "we", now, as well as the "you". The last time I was in Olympia I managed, in the double surreality of sadness and rapidly changing time zones, to leave my phone on the plane, so I can't show you that sky or those orcas. Here's the mountain in improbably purple gloaming, on a happier occasion.
I'm a featured poet for this issue, so right now you can read the entire poem "Olympia" on the Asimov's website. For a more permanent copy, you can subscribe to the magazine (look out for "Fine Print" in a future issue!) or hit up your favorite newsstand (Barnes and Noble is a good bet). Alternatively, you can buy a single electronic issue at Magzter.
For less bittersweet reading, I recently reviewed a pair of good-hearted lesbian space romances. Meanwhile, Kosmas has been enjoying the combination of sunbeams and stripes.
Yours faithfully,
Ursula.