Kind of a fun little number starts the poems in the latest Asimov’s, “Book Wyrm,” by Robert Borski. “Blankly laired in a deracinated // forest of pulp…” But read it quickly, it’s short!
Then, a treat, the next of the Bruce Boston music poems, “The Music of Particle Physics.” “When you listen more and more carefully…its convoluted waves..grow more particulate and fanciful.” A thought experiment that will leave you turning uncertain possibilities over and over in your head.
Geoffrey A. Landis checks in with “Tachyons,” immediately making them my favorite subatomic particle. “Tachyons race // backwards and forwards in time — // maybe sideways…” Such an excellent pairing with the Boston poem above. We need more subatomic poetry, I’m thinking…and not thinking, as it were.
Megan Arkenberg ends it with “Apocalyptic Love Poem,” where the end of the world kind of interferes with the end of the love affair, with satisfying results (for the reader, anyway. Maybe not so much for the narrator! ;-> ) “I hoped it would not end like this…” Gotta love the dual meanings. The over-the-top-ness works very nicely for the ending of a relationship; the whole world should be ending in such a situation, right? Anyway, it made me smile.
Peace in poetry,
P M F Johnson
