Now a small cradlefish—
his brain rocking in the skull,
adeptly learning his earliest youth,
this soft havoc of ribbons and spit
is the baby turned one side to the other,
my son in his bassinet.

He wakes and sleeps, feeds, examines.
Torpor.
He chokes, is set aside while drawn close,
a flowering stripe of green descended
from a casement that any subtle sway
is yet to enfocus.

When (and how untoward a heaven
I’ll be shot) I am perished,
my genuflections ultimate,
near these stale wheat limbs
and with his own blood fast
riding out my dustwake,
he will lay on his life and build
still more speed, a kindness or cruelty,
subtracted from the discovery
of irregular deaths, all falling parents,
like collapsing beams, these supple demises
to our line, our skin, eyes,
our cradlefish rocking in skulls,
and he will become the full fruition of them,
from the pit to the stem, then the tree
to the ground; time is already here,
unweaving his threads even now,
while he has the smallest momentum.

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has been published in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novel Tatterdemalion (Cauliay Publishing) was recently released in print and is available most places. He tries hard. Visit him at blogspot for more information about his work.

Cuttlefish photo, above, by Rachel.

When the self undergoes delineation
in the matrix of a psychoholo cube,
a fluted and opaque blossom
with an articulated stem emerges:
a polychromatic explication in which
globular nodes of flickering brilliance
designate behavioral determination.

In cases of deviance from the norm,
this flower exhibits disintegration:
the spokes of the stem appear shredded
by striation, the petals will branch
in a broader array, flattening the
fluted cone; lines can even arc rapidly
out of the cube in acute angulation.

For the individual under consideration,
the nodes relevant to the aberration
can be excised by topiary techniques:
the surgical implantation of biochips,
injection of neurochemical inhibitors,
the traditionally proven application
of stimulus-response indoctrination.

In this way each floral configuration
can bear fruit within the garden
of the state; the seasons can continue
to accumulate in an unchanging cycle;
we need never again fear that the
wilds will invade or cross-pollinate
the boundaries of our cultivation.

At work, at play, as we pass along
the verdant boulevards and plazas,
we can celebrate the termination
of that weed-choked individuation
our antecedents called history:
our brightly blooming faces reflect
one another’s modular realization.

Bruce Boston is the author of more than forty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and The Guardener’s Tale, His stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, most visibly in Asimov’s SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, visit his website.

Above: The Beginning by Polish artist Abirato.

What if there was a light that
burned always—

one that pushed out the dark and let us
move into its steady warmth?What if there was a light that
burned always—

one that pushed out the dark and let us
move into its steady warmth?

Pretend that light is in your room, living
with you. One day you find it under your bed

where it’s resting between old shoeboxes full of photographs
and notes from an old lover, one that you promised

you would wait for but never married. What if
that light, when you looked dead into it,

held the face of your father? And there you are,
eye to eye with a man who made you.

He made a promise in his creation
—to wait for you—

and for a while he did. But now you are grown
and don’t need him the way you used to.

Instead you feel the need to be freed from him.

That is when the light begins to fade out and you are left—
you and your father, sharing a moment of darkness.

David Harrity is a writer from Kentucky. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from issues of New Southerner, The Minnetonka Review, and The Xavier Review. “Where Shadows Come From” was originally published in the Pushcart nominated and Kentucky Literary Award winning chapbook “Morning and What Has Come Since” published by Finishing Line Press, 2007.

Spring, above, by Swiss photographer and artist Myostis.