A Magazine of Many Arts

In a move against the rebels,
The Capitol sends sentient stars
Nearing supernova to destroy
Any star systems refusing
To comply with their regime.

As a reward, they are promised
A safe zone for their starlings,
To grow and thrive without
Being harvested or destroyed
For fuel — protected.

These stars are too massive
To be captured as dark matter
In Singularity Jars,
Requiring far too much power
Than anyone can harness.

Even Bella cannot get close enough
To negotiate. A sordid business,
She thinks. The stars are protecting
Their young — a Universal trait.
She is just like them.

News comes in of an insurgence
In her star system and now the Capitol
Has sent a red supergiant to destroy them.
She ports to its nursery, gathers
Its starlings into a Singularity Jar,

And channels their energy
To open a wormhole ahead of it.
Bella releases the starlings
Into its path, watching,
As the star sweeps them up

Into its tremendous orbit,
And turns back to the Capitol,
Away from the star system
It was heading to destroy,
Bella’s home planet inside it.

The dying star ushers its starlings
To the safe zone, and as it enters
The galactic centre, it supernovas,
Destroying both the Capitol and
The planets surrounding it.

Bella returns home to a new world
And a new hope. No more overlords.
No more bounties and chasing stars.
No more coercion and world destruction.
She is finally free to be a child again.

illustration By ESO – http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0644a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28966525

This was me before, when I was
Lilah Jean
Two-seat top down smoothest ride around.
Buttercream sunscreen coins in my bra,
the sand on my skin a doublesweet nip,
sucralose and spice.

Queenie, they called me,
or Jeanie-baby, bikini brown and round
as a golden egg.

(But what’s a cocktail without some lime
to scald those sunkissed lips?)

This was me offering myself
westward, oceanbound, altarbound,
a sunlight sacrifice
tender to the bite of a highway
coiling out to catch
everything warm, anything soft.

(What’s the fun in the hunt
if you’re never the prey?)

Packs of cars in a gridlock snare
cleaved mountains to flee,
and every last one hummed
run little one run.
But the zip-tie freeways bound me tight
and the sunlight lashed me raw.

(Eat like a bird, never a buzzard.
Let the carcass lie.)

Look at me now.
Brown roots and sinkholes
swallowing plum-rouged bone.
Do you see the shade of hate
I use to line my lips?

Do you know my name?
Call me Queenie Cast off Her Throne.
Call me Jeanie-baby-cold-as-shale.

(Black your eyes after sundown strikes.
Prey needs camouflage.)

I’ll tell you the secrets I’ve learned
of this place:

By day it’s a vagabond liar,
a vaudeville ne’er-do-well villain clad in rags,
coaxing doubloons from tourists and dunes,
pawning castoff souls.

But damn, does it clean up nice by night.
Black tie, white-heat summer-boy smile
to kiss the days right out of your veins,
and it mixes a ruthless mojito
heavy on the lime.

(Beware the venom in a gentleman’s kiss
if you’re still warm, still soft.)

This is me after. They call me
Lilah
lily-white
ash skin and opium wit,
pale as undeath, thin as woe.
Get fucked Friday midnight closing time couture
in vinyl black as the absent moon.

There’s sugar-white sand on my lips
and poison in my teeth,
and I know now
how to squeeze someone tight.

illustration is Koga Badende by Koga Harue

The latest storm is fingering
The star-craft door, wanting
Access through the air lock:
Seeking the turbulence of our nightmares,
The chattering logic of our fears.
Storm algebra is building
To storm calculus, inferentials
And differentials calculating us
Awake all night. Each storm
Seems more focused on points
Of ingress, the weather learning
Our ways, and its own limitations.
Angry air takes measurements,
Aggressively projects pressures,
Seems to imagine
What use there is to our appendages,
How they are applied against air-lock doors.
I have warned the crew
That even a clear day is thinking about us:
Hide your locomotion, repurpose
Your grasp, lie with your ways,
Admit no limitations.
Listen, as the fingering becomes scratching.

I regret that I have delivered
only this headless God,
striding across the Downs,
and, erratically,
occasionally waving its arms,
creating things that, frankly,
look a bit odd/useless,
(the God not being able to see its handiwork and all),
in any case,
I trust it will affright your enemies,
at least as much as your friends,
and do not much more harm
than you have been doing to yourselves anyway.

So, thanks for your request;
this is all I can do for you at this time,
and in the future,
please regard a fatted calf,
as the least you can do,
if you expect a helpful response.