Not too late to give the poet in your life the gift of speculative poetry. DN has been around since 1986, bringing some of the best far-out words there are. Both print and digital versions are available: new issues three times a year and back numbers from the 80s on. PayPal $1 to jopnquog@gmail.com to check out the Sept. 2020 issue.
My sister went back in time
lived a lifetime, 30 years,
a millennium ago
returned just in time
for her 18th birthday
what do you get for someone like that?
The Claws That Catch
Each crab darted out of its hole in turn to pinch a bit from his leg, and then retreat before it could be caught. It was the hole shell game all over again. Before long, they had worked their way up to his chin, and it was all she wrote.
Runaway Greenhouse Effect
Pastel pink saucers
and their precious cargo:
tiny round-cheeked critters
and their mysterious heat-sucking tech
drive a surprisingly hard bargain
we got to keep Zanzibar
and grateful for that
Wicked child!
Mom
she
always
embarrassed
you when she was with
you remember when she wrote in
the sky "surrender Dorothy!" you thought that was so
rude you wanted to drift away
you rid yourself of
her but you're
just like
that
witch
Last Holiday at Financial Aid
The office-party planners,
not in the mood to waste
a perfectly good plastic tree,
Didn’t take it down post-Christmas.
They repurposed it for Valentine’s Day,
using heart-shaped lights and beads
and red decorative balls.
For St. Patrick's day the tree
wore a green sequined hat,
rainbow fringe, and individualized elves,
bearing the faces of the office staff.
Next, for Graduation,
they made miniature caps and gowns,
and improbable resumes;
my favorite work experience
was Orca groomer.
Independence Day, a fire hazard,
had to be canceled,
but Thanksgiving was a hit,
with construction-paper hand turkeys
favorite recipes, food pix cut from magazines,
and real chocolate-chip cookies.
The tree was not taken down until 2036,
and then only because
of the predatory mutant fungus.
But by the time they burned the tree,
it was far too late.
-----
Thanks to the real-life party planners, and my sister, who told me what they did.
The journeycake, having jumped from the skillet and rolled out the door, thought it was so smart, didn't it. Commandeering a free ride from the first truck it came to, it discovered too late that the truck was carrying 2000 gallons of maple syrup.
The farmer's wife closed and locked the door before she poured another dollop of batter into her skillet. Little Johnny said it was the best he'd ever had.
Single-celled foraminiferan (arrow; shelled amoeba) in shelter void (small light area in lower center) within microcrystalline microbial coating (brown) on rugose coral (upper right). Growth of foram in this void indicates it was connected in the third dimension to open sea water at the time. Coral-microbial mound, thin-section photomicrograph, Mississippian, North Alabama.
The biggest hurricane
to hit Nicaragua
hit Nicaragua today,
and even bigger ones
may start to form next week.
Louisiana got three this year,
bayous drowned: a soggy mess,
mud and trees flowed
out into the Gulf;
joined the ooze.
but wait, there’s more.
Before we’re done,
Omega sails up you know what,
finishing A’s job,
scrubbing bedrock clean.
Now ain’t that nice.
2020 Pushcart nominations
Dreams and Nightmares magazine
Colleen Anderson, Telltale Moon, #116
F. J. Bergmann, This Is Just To Say, #114
Robert Borski, Parabiont, #115
Abi Hynes, The Finger, #114
Gerri Leen, Look Right, #116
Greg Schwartz, wedding vows, #114
As always, it was very tough to decide!
Tiny spiny sphere (center), a microfossil of some kind [algal spore?] and not the first of these I've seen from this location, in microbial mound [like a reef, but lacking a rigid skeletal framework], Mississippian, North Alabama, field of view 1 mm wide, thin-section photomicrograph.
Microconch (cross-section showing 6 chambers) encrusting substrate (S) of microbial mudstone that coated rugose coral (out of sight to the left. Mississippian, North Alabama, in coral-microbial mound.
1 million fools a day
are sucking down the dangerous air of planes
all of my loved ones
so glad none of them are you
wheels spin
lurching from gravel
to grass
November blooms of ginger
lantana, hyssop, and camellia
born from the runaway climate
Cross-section through microconchid embedded in microbial mound, genus and species not yet determined. Thin-section photomicrograph, field of view 1 mm wide, Mississippian of North Alabama.
You are stardust, via the more prosaic kind, blown onto your mother's food when she was pregnant.
ginger bravely blooming
in months that once were cold
winter harvest on the table
peppers and tomatoes red
there is no frost in Mudville
winter has struck out
Eroded edge of a microbial reef buried by wackestone (lime mud containing floating larger fragments). Thin section photomicrograph, Mississippian, North Alabama, field of view one millimeter wide. B=boundstone/reef, W=wackestone, two central arrows point to eroded edge of boundstone, left arrow points to piece of boundstone floating in wackestone.
Yesterday's orange butterflies
will freeze tonight
today's gale blows winter in
and I will dream of spring
This is not a poem
because I say it is
because I've broken up
sentences to make it so
jump from topic to topic
leave out words
forget about rhyme
and meter
I say it's not
I say it is
this is not the end
good day
to walk under a ladder
break a mirror
step on a crack
pet my black cat
superstition pales
in reality's face
vines still strangle the garden
everything is green
and winter isn't coming
this brief time of the year
and in early spring
climate change is a beautiful thing
Brown microbial lime boundstone containing diverse skeletal elements (upper right) adjacent to poorly sorted lime sand with calcite cement (lower left). Mississippian mound, North Alabame, 2.5 mm field of view. Pale colors of calcite crystals result from cross-polarized light. Sandstone contains crinoid fragments, chunks of boundstone, and many other kinds of particles, and fills a small void that was left open as the mound grew.
Each nut had another nut inside it, bigger than the last. Eventually, we found one big enough to live in, cut a door in the side, and moved in. Same way you got stuck here, I suppose.
Mysterious spiky tube in Mississippian mound, North Alabama. We don't yet know what it is. Scale=0.2 mm.
GOP: Well, uh, it's the popular vote that really matters, and it's sooooo close!
Dem: We agree: the Electoral College must go.
GOP:
Dreams and Nightmares 116, the September issue, has been mailed to all subscribers and all contributors. It's been a few days, so if you live within the United States and you didn't get your copy, shoot me an email.
I am currently reading for 118, the may 2021 issue, but it's almost fall.
You can get a PDF of any issue for a dollar, PayPal to jopnquog@gmail.com.
Cretaceous estates isn't a bad place to live, if you don't mind the 40-foot-long scimitar toothed predators and hundred-foot veggie lovers, which make having a garden completely impossible.
Thin-section photomicrograph of a small part of a coral-microbial mound. Loaf-shaped cells of the problematic organism Aphralysia capriori. Colonized by small undentified organism (white arrow). A. capriori cells are connected via openings in their microcrystalline walls (black arrow). Mississippian, North Alabama.
What's the Point?
immortality
so many pitfalls
in this timeline the people
did not age
had eradicated disease
refrained from producing
more children than were lost to misadventure
they avoided boredom
with an ever shifting panoply of diversions
offloaded memory
to nearly imperishable crystalline storage
found and cured the causes of addiction
and all mental disorders
conquered the dangerous intricacies
of stellar physics
and then were obliterated
in the inevitable heat death
of their universe anyway
Voting with chips
a time-honored method
involving cannons
steel spheres
and black powder
recognized as definitive
in the court of fait accompli
your warm flesh trembles
I stroke your cheek
crumbs of black earth falling
from my cold hands
manikin
holes in her fiberglass belly
staining her knockoff shirt
her right arm raised
as if to touch the window
The Prince reflected that, although the pie had been certified blackbird-free, no one had said anything about eldritch horror from beyond He watched with considerable satisfaction as the King's legs, tightly wrapped by fetid suckered arms, vanished, bite by bite, into a hideous transdimensional maw.
Just One Vote
If I hadn't gotten lost
if I hadn't left late
if I hadn't forgotten what day it was
if I hadn't been this close to the end of the movie
if I hadn't been all tied up — to my bed
well, then the Venusians would've won the election
the Martian party would've been out on its aural membranes
and the forced marches
culling of the strongest, when the food transports.docked
and the ocean removal
probably would have stopped
Jupiter's Great Red Spot
races through the sky
no land below
to feed its fury
no city with hatches battened
citizens fled or fools
looters trapped by the waters
of retribution
or are there great civilizations
their drunken towers swept away
every few millennia by catastrophe
just as here on Earth
I blame pesticides in the groundwater. My neighbor's two pit bulls were no match for the 10-foot mutant shrews. We were saved in the nick by the mantis. But after what happened to Charlie, we dare not go outside. the food is running low. Jane wants to make a dash for the SUV. We can't wait for cold weather, she says. She didn't see how fast it moved when the Wilsons tried the same trick.
