TOTALITY

by Mary Turzillo

The Sun and the Moon

did a courtship dance

did a contrary dance

nearer come nearer

far dance away

till the Sun mocked his luna love

japing “cold, changeable she” 

and “you love the earth more than me”

and it’s true: she grew fat, she grew thin,

he was hot, she was cold

Apollo, Diana:

stag and the doe

till she danced right in front of him

close to him, over him

taking delicious gold bites of him

throwing her skirts quite over him

till she blotted him out

til the night crickets sang

the the birds went to sleep

a black handkerchief over the land.

She punched a hole in the sky

where her lover had been

left a necklace of fire, a sparkle of beads

a diamond ring

for a minute or two:

the lovers' bright band

the dusk bridal veil

dark covered light, cold kissed the gold

the ring hung a promise 

a wedding of midnight and fire.

Mary Turzillo's Nebula-winner "Mars Is no Place for Children" and her Analog novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl were recommended reading on the International Space Station. She has been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars, and Rhysling ballots. Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. Her fourth collaboration with Marge Simon, Victims, also won an Elgin. Her latest two books are Cast from Darkness, also with Simon, and Cosmic Cats and Fantastic Furballs. Mary lives in Berea, Ohio, with her scientist-writer husband, Geoffrey Landis. Today’s eclipse is her third such experience.

THE MOON 2018

by Harold Oberman

December 24, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of NASA's  Earthrise photograph. Harold Oberman was young enough when the Apollo missions filled him with optimism, but on earth, circumstances have changed. His poems have recently appeared in TheNewVerse.News and are forthcoming in the Free State Review.

ON THE CHEETO WITH TINY HANDS

by Sue Brannan Walker

Hades, Hell’s Bells, the smoke’s getting to me, Hephaestus sending Olympian signals ‘bout all the hubbub happening on earth, worse than Hermes hiding Apollo’s herd of cows, no matter that Hera and Helios and hordes of many-headed beasts thought it was a horrible thing to do and getting all heated up about the theft, and I say that even worse than Hades hitting on Persephone and hauling her off to the Underworld is old Howhard’s grabbing girls by their honey-pots and his acts of deportation and well, you could hear all the howling from Hell to Houston, from Hamburg to Hanoi to Hermopolis in Greece, and damned if that orange windbag, that short-fingered Vulgarian with baby hands, that wallaroo hailing huge crowds and all those alternative facts erupting like Klyuchevskoy in eastern Russia: cough, choke, hawk, hem and—Deîmos kaì Phóbos, yuge horror and fear. Smell rotten orange, hear it, the nasalizing pain of it, the oink, grunt, squeal of that canker-headed scobblelotcher that needs to be hog-tied?  It is hard to get a handle on all the hullabaloo, but trust that trumpdignation and limiting the reach of mini-hands might set us free. 

Sue Brannan Walker is Professor Emerita from the University of South Alabama. She was Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2003-2012. She is the publisher of Negative Capability Press, the author of The Ecopoetics of James Dickey, ten books of poetry, and has published critical articles on Marge Piercy, Richard Eberhart, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, as well as edited numerous anthologies.