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Excited to show you the cover of my forthcoming full-length collection of dark speculative poetry, Some Disassembly Required, featuring many previously unpublished poems.



Some Disassembly Required had me at “Bah Bah Black Goat”….Providing both tongue-in-fungoid-cheek and real scares, Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry just about covers it with his use of free verse and formalist verse (Great Old One haibun, uh-huh), funny and scary verse, Sfnal and fantastical verse.

When you read some of these poems, you’ll recognize places you’ve been...even if only in your dreams and nightmares. Kinda nice to have some validation for those night gaunt sightings, eh?

Only reality is scarier than some of these poems.

--Denise Dumars, author of Paranormal Romance: Poems Romancing the Paranormal.

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David Kopaska-Merkel... uses precise language and twisted speculation to forge a...nuanced world-view….His works here, from poems about post-apocalyptic mutations to pieces dealing with shapeshifters and space travelers, are filled with creatures who are not so much extremes, or bigger than life, but are instead totally accessible because of the ordinariness of their cruelties, the normality of their mistakes and desires, and the pettiness of their wide-spread destruction. These are the small beings who do huge damage, the powerful divinities who act out of their small-mindedness, greed, and ignorance. Then, mixed in among the fantastic and the alien, almost to the point where the reader can no longer tell one type of being from another, are humans. If we created gods and demons in our own image, to be worshiped, feared and reviled, David Kopaska-Merkel's sf-nal creations have likewise used humans in the same way. This book...is a dark, gritty, almost horrifically strange one. But, with some disassembly, the reader can start to see bright patches, sympathetic and approachable. Of course, those only serve to make...the horrors more relatable. --Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, Editor, Spaceports & Spidersilk, author of Midnight Comes Early.

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more books than we thought yum!

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Remembering "The Wheel on the School," by Meindert DeJong There was a young stork on a wheel To some this might seem a sweet deal As I spin around My head hits the ground Complained that sore stork on the wheel

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My latest speculative-poetry collection from indie booksellers

 

https://bookshop.org/books/the-ambassador-takes-one-for-the-team/9781936021635 

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"The Edible Zoo" -- poems for small children, about eating animals. Play-tested on a dozen niecephews. Ages 2-up. Free PDF, just ask.

This is the cover, which is not included in the PDF, but there are interior illustrations, which are included.

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This offer only applies to Alabama school teachers and school librarians. You can get free copies of Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks, the fantastic, profusely illustrated book about the last half a billion years of Alabama's history, written by Dr. Jim Lacefield. This book is written for high school students, which means it is also perfect for adults who don't know much about geology but want to learn. The book consists of short sections, each of which describes a particular subject, such as Pennsylvanian coal deposits, which is important to Alabama geology. If you are not a teacher or librarian, you can buy the book from the Alabama Museum of Natural History, which is located in Tuscaloosa (but there is information about the book on their website). The book is available from a number of online booksellers, but you will get the best price from the publisher.

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Last year, for the holidays (which include our mid-winter birthdays), my wife and I bought each other books. Actually, I bought them all, so I only bought authors we both like. This was not difficult. I bought murder mysteries by Elly Griffiths, Colin Cotterill, and several others. This year, we decided to do it separately. She was too busy to tell me what she wanted, except that she wanted a Kindle, so I picked some safe options. I bought her the new novel by Jamie Lee Moyer, "Brightfall," which is a retelling of the myth about Robin Hood and Maid Marian. I also bought her two books by Becky Chambers. We had read one by her last year, an entertaining science fiction novel called something like "a visit to a small and angry planet," so this year, I bought the two sequels: "a closed and common orbit" and "something of a spaceborn few." Of course, the first of these didn't show up, so she couldn't read the second one either. I emailed the bookseller about the missing book and they blew me off. Why do you put somebody like that in customer service? (I realize that it is probably a family business, and that was most likely the bad-tempered spouse.) Anyway I emailed back to say how displeased I was, and another person refunded my money. So I didn't put their store on my blacklist, and I won't tell you who they are. I ordered another copy from someone else. Which is still not here yet. She got me a collection by Algernon Blackwood, a recent novel by Tim Powers, and one by Gene Wolfe. And I get to borrow her Kindle.

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Dreams and Nightmares update. I think I mentioned that I was sick. I did get the corrected master of 114, the January issue, sent to the printer and to pdf subscribers. I should be able to mail copies within a week. Meanwhile, I'm reading for 115. Email jopnquog@gmail.com.

Rhysling update. Not really started, cos I was sick. Please send your nominations. I should be caught up in a week. Questions: email jopnquog@gmail.com.

Ambassador update. Now available, print and pdf. Reviewers, and anyone else, email jopnquog@gmail.com.

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Eye To The Telescope 35, Hard SF contents finalized. Except my intro. You will see it soon. DN 114 somewhat delayed, but nearly ready to jump back into that. Sale to Polu Texni--will be up sometime soon. New full-length collection, The Ambassador Takes One For The Team--hard SF poetry. Ebook available momentarily; print book in a week or so.

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The Timid Particles

Scooting back on the shelf,

The book in faded brown boards

Imagines itself a mote of dust;

Disrobed, it scurries through the stacks

Isolated pages slither into the rears

Of proper books, which jump and squeak;

Some pages folded into airplanes

Launch themselves panspermatically

Across the aisles,

Dripping punctuation.

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Blurry on one side
Doubled on the other
By the grace of random chance
I can still read
And the books are calling
Full-throated
Whispering
Oxidized and fresh
At every stage of life
Anderson's Shield
Each page letting go as I turn it
Heading for that big blue recycling bin
In the hall

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Going cold turkey 
from the files on my dead computer
Thank God I have this phone
And contact with the world
To keep me from having to read
One more novel

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The Trajectory of Culture 

Before they encountered us
the Fomalhauts
possessed no concept of self-indulgence
worker bees, folk called them
the proverbial dull boy
never mind the head appendages
or the scales
or how they reproduce through the mail
(they had no spam).
 
Before we met them
they had no vigilante justice
they found our pornography
appealing, and soon invented
their own, which usually arrived postage due.
 
We introduced credit cards,
bank loans, compound interest;
they found these novel concepts.
 
We took them on tours
of our marketplaces
where every price, it appeared,
had been reduced.
Amazing the debt these aliens accrued.
 
It was direct-mail advertising
that really did them in--
at frst the spots were, well, naïve
but as the ads race intensifed
the Fomarketers learned that sex sells

Fomals sporting overlarge
sense-enhancing gear in black plastic
tore open packages claiming to contain
freeze-dried mail-order brides
(really just powdered food products).
 
Winsome young Fomies were
tearing open their mail too
receiving proposals of marriage
from princes
     wrongfully deposed
     handsome
     generous.
 
A few months later – captivated
by artifcial insemination
and our hi-tech DNA manipulation,
Fomies were popping larvae all over:
     Twins!
          Triplets!
               By the broodsac!
                    The boatload!
while the non-brooding fomals
postal donors of GM gametes
(not one of them a prince
or even a duke)
took no responsibility at all.
 
Most of these unnatural offspring
were grievously flawed--
injured by experimental methods
that would never have been allowed on humans--
although they were available in a variety of colors
and with naturally perfumed excreta
 
We converted them to our religions
(no matter which, so long
as they selected one or another).
We gave them nihilism, narcissism,
solipsism, existentialism
(not to mention pessimism).
We sold them anti-depressants,
antioxidants, anti-coagulants,
then we upped the anti.
 
The Fomalhauts have recently been
reclassifed as a vanished species,
unfortunately extinct. Their culture
and civilization, so many millennia old,
suddenly defunct. A sad coincidence,
so soon after encountering us.
They will be missed
 

--David C. Kopaska-Merkel & Kendall Evans

from our new Elgin-nominated collection, Entanglement 
Print copies $8 postpaid from me (more if sent outside the US) 

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I just found out yesterday that I have a story in this book ("The Tindalos Cycle") that was published nine years ago. The story was written 40 years ago. The original publisher apparently lost my address. Hippocampus Press took it over sometime ago and they are sending me a copy. The lineup of authors looks very good. Until yesterday, the last I heard was that the book was not going to be published after all. A pleasant surprise to find out that it exists.


https://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/fiction/the-tindalos-cycle-edited-by-robert-m.-price?zenid=846udc771125l6l1pefe9v9636

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14 years
after our last move
bookmark still in place

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insinuating
themselves into classic tomes
invasion failed
no one sprang the trap
browsing gone digital

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Just saw a beautiful review of Metastable Systems in  the forthcoming issue of Star*line. They say that favorable reviews do not increase sales, but they sure make you feel good. I also have several poems  coming out in that same issue.

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the comfort of books
to be read and reread
forgotten jewels

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This week's poem at polutexni.com iis a new one by me. Also,  one of my poems was selected for the Dwarf Stars anthology and one of my poetry books, Metastable Systems, has been nominated for the Elgin award.

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paperbacks so old
cigarette ads are glued in
authors all dead