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| Fiction: XenErotica |
| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. IX, No. XXI |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Saturday, 24 May 2008 | |
 The Starpoet Newsletter Volume IX, No. XXI Spring winds its way to summer
Driven by northern storms And the southern high That moves up our coastline The temperature rises Slowly tempered by the wind Teasing us with a hint of June
While the gray clouds Insist we are in April Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2008 C. E.
 Memorial Day and Rolling Thunder, hot dogs, hamburgers, and the American Flag.
Summer is only a breath away. 
Come join hand in hand, brave Americans all, I have relatives killed by the British,
Centuries ago in Rebels they were and patriots, Full measure given for our new nation Born in glorious words and the blood Of good men and women. I know only their last name, but barely,
And nary a face, Only brief memories captured In a few family notes, Now in these lines of mine: The Brothers Bull,
Members of the Bennington Militia, Died by British Hands Aboard a sailing ship off October, 1777, That Lisa Jain Thompson
Memorial Day 2008 media report
The Nature of the Mix
Caught up in the paparazzi contrapuntal conversation, Splash themselves across countless magazines and television, Selling photographs of both their weddings and their babies, Until the only sound that remains after the ambulances go Is the speculation in the press on the nature of the drug mix. Death can be quite romantic, a virtuoso violin well played,
Installing smartcard keyboard drivers On anorexic cyanide machines, Talent scouts and publicity agents, well paid for their efforts
Keep turning the volume of the conversation up, While the tweener driven swat squads, demure innocents they, Recite the newest alphabets while eagerly consuming
Every YouTube FaceBook derelict And the very latest penny whistle dirge. Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2008 Sulu’s getting married in the morning!
Ding Dong! The bells are going to chime. George Takei can tie the knot now! Let’s get Sulu to the church on time! LJT
traditional
In Flanders Fields
by Major John McCrae, MD
Canadian Army 1915 In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields  starpoet
Come On-A My House
C’mon over to my house,
I’m going to give you candy, A plum and a cherry, Bright constellations Festooned with comets, Smart golden ships Whose holds are filled With sex and imagination; Worlds where women Risk limb and life Beside their men, Beside their lovers, Their children And their families; Planets where life Watches the sunset And two moons rise Above a summer tide, Where the air is still crystal And earth a distant memory Taught in second grade history books, Honored with annual ceremonies Of fading social relevance; Lives where each breath Is a calculated risk, An unavoidable dare against A universe uninterested whether We breathe our last; Where Lucy’s multi-worlded children, Star tinged wanderers In search of good bottom land, Lay footprints in the ancient sands Of unknown destiny, And love is the bond that makes us Man, One family, one race, one poet Singing of our life along the shoreline. Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2008 the reality of being a female mammal.
The World Confronts Gender Theory
My mamms have been grammed, Left, right, and then sideways, Squished like heavy hydrogen water balloons, Pushed and prodded Until they were positioned just so By a strangely detached female technician Whose hands excited me even less than my own. If there were truly no difference
Between women and men -- As gender theory would teach us -- Fairness would dictate a scrotumgram be given To all those who are born vaginaless. Lisa Jain Thompson
On the occasion of her annual mammogram May 2008 Bite off more than you can chew,
Then chew it.
-- Ella Williams
 Black Patch Fever and the Requirements of Chaos
a short fiction
by Lisa Jain Thompson
© Memorial Day 2008
Vietnam and Northern Virginia share a fondness for heat and humidity and the abundant thick growth that accompanies it. Trees and vines are everywhere, the lush, vibrant undergrowth, dense and difficult if left unchecked. Forest would rule the world if not for the efforts of man. At three a. m., the shrapnel in her hip moved.
Again.
Better than the enemy who put it there but still …
Forty years and more the war rages on.
Outside her window, the storm rages. Another torrential spring rain too wet for the watershed to absorb. She can feel the humidity rising, taste it still in her blood. The jungle’s hot breath sweating down her neck. The echo of guns aimed in her direction, the sound of bullets even closer.
The plane, falling from the sky, shattered into bits and explosions, its mission done, its pieces scattered across the forest and the flames.
 Gunfire.
The enemy spreads out searching for her partner, the pilot who volunteered for a mission he was much too young for.
Her leg’s on fire, fragments from the fuselage or perhaps a bullet.
More guns. Closer.
She hears voices. Vietnamese. Coming near.
Movement in the bushes, an American uniform moving away. The Navy pilot. She stands, falls. The bone shattered in a thigh.
Bullets hit a tree. The pilot runs, thoughts of stealth giving way to desperation. He sounds like a water buffalo in full flight. The NVA turn, fire in the direction of the water buffalo. Semi-automatic.
Once noticed, the hip aches. She struggles into position, ignores the pain, crawls to the high ground where she can see the Vietnamese.
The leg is bleeding now.
She props herself up. Listens for the sound of the pilot. Then lays down suppressing fire until the pilot escapes, no longer within reach of the NVA.
She continues shooting, killing three, possibly four Vietnamese before the NVA retreat. The leg continues to bleed until she applies her belt as makeshift tourniquet. There is a six inch gash sliced into her left arm that she bandages.
She cannot stand. She cannot walk. She barely drags her body into the bushes when she hears the footsteps of the remaining NVA come searching.
Barely breathing, she watches Charlie pass three feet away. Memorizes their faces. The way they walk. The sound of their voices.
She remains unnoticed.
After thirty minutes. she shoots morphine into her leg and begins the long crawl in the general direction of a firebase. She remembers little of the next week until she arrives at the U. S. camp.
 Later, after her body heals, during a lull in activity between missions, she goes out after Charlie, the remaining NVA who failed to kill her. She finds each one, cleanly dispatches them until no more remained, then returns to camp waiting for her next assignment.
Outside her window, the rain is letting up but the humidity remains. The thunder has passed, the lightning dulled, and the border collie is up on the bed beside her, no longer afraid once the boom-booms grew silent.
Morning is only a few hours away as, her covers in disarray, she slips back into sleep. Her nightgown barely covers the scar on her hip.
Drawn out in silence, the dead of
Provide hard evidence, shifting the search From buried survivors to clearing corpses From shattered buildings: so many dead bodies To lay under earth, driving fear from the living. Everything shook, houses flattened, A child crushed on a schoolhouse third floor
Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter? Bodies in the middle stages of decomposition, Limbs broken off, doorways forelornly standing Where the house around them has disappeared: Unmarked graves dot a green hillside overlooking the rubble, Small mounds of dirt that do not block The pungent smell of decaying flesh wafting from the ground. I have to look for my son. He was at middle school,
We can't get in touch with him. Wooden markers with hastily written names Are scattered through the mounded soil in the schoolyard. To the side ten bodies wait, pulled from the school’s rubble. A woman walks by with her baby and young daughter,
Beads of sweat gathered on their foreheads, A chicken pokes it head from a hole in her sack, Squawks irritably, salvage from the earthquake. A truck pulls up, gathers exhausted farmers Who hoist themselves over the side, Cramming their possessions in around them. This is the city, how bad must it be in the provinces,
Who is shifting methodically through the wreckage, To determine who survived and who is still dying? Zhou cradles his wife in his arms, holding her hand And stroking her back while she sobs hysterically; Survivors search the thousands buried, Retracing careful steps, finding only orphans. -- All that hard work and so few people left alive.
The Wokong Nature Reserve reports Three pandas missing, along with the staff Who cared for them. Sixty other pandas remain alive, Safe from the random acts of Mother Nature. We remain, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene,
Full of sight and curiosity, drawn towards the closing vortex To count the coffins of our hubris. Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2008
CSI
Epithelia My vaginal epithelia,
Once discovered by an investigator After some murderous tryst, Might present challenges To even the best trace analysis -- or not, depending on my mix. No one has ever tested my nuclei,
Counted the X's and Y's, In any event, my master switch Was slow to pull the trigger; Perhaps some mutatation of SYR
Got mangled in transcription In a mishmash of cross-timing, Placing body and mind In unintentional opposition. So here I am, With tissue and cavity and secretion, Leaving bits and pieces on latex protections, Full of estrogen and chromosomes And six inches or more of reception -- A woman for all seasons of Grissom’s CSI. Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2007 I've got all the money I need ...
So long as I die before Monday.
-- Sue Margolis
connections
The quayside in Laputta
Is surrounded by desolation, The sky rains darkly Over the low lying islands Of the Irrawaddy delta Where rice fields lately grew.
Lisa Jain Thompson May 2008  memorial day
Outside the Wire
There is blood outside the wire,
Bodies, the smell of death, -- The stars shine brighter, The sun, warmer. Life slips by more quickly, Larger, closer; A confusion of wills
Struggling to win, Dominate, survive: Extending the moment A second longer Changes everything. Lisa Jain Thompson May 2008   Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1995-2008. Further distribution of this newsletter in its entirety is authorized. Email your letters and postcards or visit her contact page at the Starpoet website |
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, 24 May 2008 ) | |
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