It is back to school and then off to bed with two new poems for you this week. The first is by Mary Gilonne, a translator living in France – her poetry has been published in numerous magazines, she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and she took a first prize in the Wedlock International Poetry Competition, and the second is by Connecticut-based writer Edward Ahern. Ed Ahern resumed writing after 40 odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He's had over 90 stories and poems published so far, and two books. He has his original wife, but advises that after 48 years they are both out of warranty. Oh, and best not look under your bed tonight!


​3D Biology for beginners
by Mary Gilonne

It starts with wafering, horizontal.
I strip a layer down skin-flat, leafed.
Can edges curl as if they’re folding arms,
surrendering? I open G files, scan,
nozzle a lisping snake of lasered light to fit. 
New words wire my mouth like vertebrae,
link a mathematical map of binding bone,
sintering, extrusion, this magical mastering
of polymers. Each thin slice of precious
bioprint I pressure, melt until its utmost point
of liquifaction. Somewhere atoms fuse across
these boundaries of particles, mould invisible
mechanics into a perfect piece of you. 


Bedtime Story
by Edward Ahern

Be careful when you wake
In the hours just after midnight
For you have ebbed and the night surges.
 
Be careful if you wander
Into different seeming rooms
For the other things that prowl.
 
Be careful of the noise in darkness,
In the creaks and cracks and rattles
For not all menace holds its tongue.
 
Be careful, oh be careful
In stepping from your bed
For what you fear has come.

​Back to poetry this week with contributions by Daniel Ausema and Simon Williams. Colorado-based Daniel Ausema is a member of the SFPA and his poetry has most recently appeared in Strange Horizons and Dreams & Nightmares. You can follow him on Twitter at @ausema. Simon Williams is a widely published poet from Devon (in the UK) with five collections to his name, the latest being A Place Where Odd Animals Stand (Oversteps Books, 2012) and He|She  (Itinerant Press, 2013). He founded The Broadsheet magazine in 2013 and you can find him on Twitter at @GreatBigBadger

​

A Poem Sent Back Across Time-Space (a Ghazal*)
by Daniel Ausema

My people crossed a thousand skies, fleeing the sun
Pursued by quarks (matter in disguise), fleeing the sun.

You stayed, digging a shelter in a mountain shadow
Why run? you asked, Can't be wise, fleeing the sun.

We used to meet in the wheat field at dusk,
Slipping away from watchful eyes, fleeing the sun.

I find no echo of you in potential lovers here,
Coolly distant, sipping their chais, fleeing the sun.

In red, dying light we part. My lottery number matches me
to my spaceship, melancholic prize, fleeing the sun.

We reach a new planet, and who am I to judge
what new love will rise, fleeing the sun?


​
Eye-Witness, The Bronx
by Simon Williams
 
I remember being taken to the museum
as a kid and seeing all the dinosaurs’
bones like giant toothpicks. I thought
they were big, but this one
 
doesn’t need to leap tall buildings,
can just knock ‘em outta the way.
Where’s it been hiding and how
did it get down the Hudson?
 
There’s talk of a complete evacuation,
but we don’t all have folks in Maine
or Massachusetts. Anyway, my taxi
looks like roadkill.
 
How will they get rid of it?
A swarm of sidewinders were like wasps
it batted down, needed no antihistamine.
They just pissed it off.
 
I’m keeping my head down,
putting in an insurance claim.
Shame they didn’t keep that massive
gorilla under wraps, in case of this.


* A ghazal is an ancient poetic form, originally of North African & Middle Eastern origin, consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.

Yes, we are a day early (have to be on the road and out of communications reach for the next couple of days) which kind of ironic because today's story – Nostalgia by Mark Mills – has a time travel element. The author is Mark Mills, an English Instructor at Northern Kentucky University who has been published in Tor.com, Short Story America, Pill Hill Press, RuneWright, Aurora Wolf Press, Bards and Sages Quarterly, among other places, he is also a regular Grievous Angel contributor.


Nostalgia
by Mark Mills


Mark Twain never said, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because things always get there 15 years late.” Witty remarks of unknown origins are always attributed to Twain, Oscar Wilde, George Carlin, or Lincoln, so the misattribution shouldn’t come as a shock. What makes this bon mot notable is that it clearly refers, not to Cincinnati, but Linter.

Perhaps through some sort of geological fault, or perhaps only through magic, Linter exists 15 years behind the rest of the world. Upon entering the city limits, middle-aged parents grow fresh and young, antiques lose their value, and children cease to exist.

Residents rarely stray. Often an angry teenager will storm out of home, drive across the town borders to find himself divorced, corpulent, and balding. Older residents are more cautious. To venture outside is to gamble that you can shave a decade and a half from your life-span. The county coroner stations an ambulance a few yards beyond the main road exiting the town for the poor souls who risk it and rot into goo.

The federal headquarters of the post office and IRS have set up special provisions for late fees and overnight deliveries but the government is for the most part uninterested – Linter has nothing to do with UFOs, Satanic cults, or banking, no need for a conspiracy. It is the private sector that proves a threat.

Linter is a small town, barely two thousand folk make their home there. It can barely hold back the forces with a one and one-half decades advantage. Their cell phone reception is laughable. 

Armed patrols roam the surrounding woods and sentries stand before the town’s single highway exit to hold back the tide of grieving lovers and sobbing parents. Once a women was stopped while carrying a sack of 18 dead cats. A man from Wyoming has been deterred only at gunpoint from towing in his wrecked Corvette. But the town is not without pity. If the searcher’s need is great enough – and if there is enough room – they are allowed to pass.

# # # # #

But, even with a 15-year detour, time never rests. Parents can only look upon their living children and count the days. It makes no difference for cat or Corvette, the inevitable revisits. At that point, the survivors limp away or, if too noisy, are forcibly ejected. But some grasp at hope, for it is rumored that somewhere in Linter is a coal cellar that when entered, grants access to another 15 year reprieve. Yes, you’ve heard the stories but no one has ever found it. One miracle may be more than anyone deserves; anything beyond is simply presumptuous.

​Two new urban fantasy micro-fiction tales today – Dances Moves by S. Kay and A Surprise Friend by Nicola Wells...


Dance Moves
by S. Kay

Black boots scuff the EDM dance floor while robot videos generate leads. Dancers keep pausing to buy products on their phones.

* S. Kay is a queer Canadian writing one tweet at a time. Her work has appeared in Nanoism,7x20, the EEEL, Monkeybicycle and more. Her debut book RELIANT is out this Fall from tNY.Press.



A Surprise Friend
by Nicola Wells

He walked slowly, moving silently across the wooden floors in the hall, streetlight spilling in the living room window showing him the way through the dark. 

For months he watched her, following her home from work, first in his rusty Renault Clio, and then in the Mazda he borrowed from the hire company in town when he began to worry she noticed. He watched her come and go to the gym. She liked to swim in the morning, doing laps in the glass-windowed pool; sometimes an early fitness class too. He wanted to be everywhere with her, the mall, outside her mother’s house, sitting three tables away that time she went to the bar with some girlfriends. He drew a slow breath as he reached the top of the staircase, breathing her in, a heady mixture of roses and vanilla. The door to her shadowy room was open an inch, just like the last time he had visited, the time when she wasn’t around. 

The rope he was holding felt heavy. She would be excited by his visit, he could tell. After all, he knew her. They were friends. 

* Nicola Wells lives in Sussex, UK where she spends her time working, and giving in to her addiction for micro and flash fiction.