Rhysling nominations: The King of Eyes
April 7, 2021
Here’s the second poem that I wrote which has been nominated for the Rhysling Awards, run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association based in the US. This one was nominated in the Long category, and is from my book Monstrous.
The King of Eyes
His crown has fifty-two spikes,
and each boasts an eye
gouged from conquered realms,
or scooped like a four-minute egg
from every defeated pretender.
The eyes look out at courtiers,
at advisers, open and shameless
as any necessary lie.
Crowns parade around heads,
each decoration a soldier,
so there is always an eye,
or a platoon of eyes
upon you, heavy as an official chain.
We lucky, or unlucky, few
often in His Majesty’s presence
have noted that he arranges
the eyes to a distinct pattern,
blue following modest brown,
and every tenth eye is green.
Opalescent eyes, beflecked,
break the pattern near each ear,
as if to drop colourful rumour
direct into the regal brain.
Some say that it is possible
for each crown-eye to wink,
and that such a wink is deadly
as any guillotine, for the flicker
is only bestowed on those
whose own eyes will soon adorn
the King’s most puissant head.
I can not say if this is true,
as I have yet to see an eye
that still sports a gown of lash.
We walk quietly around
the regal panopticon,
just in case the eyes still see,
and the King might catch the
slightest flicker of disloyalty.
Yesterday I noticed an eye
of a near emerald green
that clearly broke the pattern —
and I recognised the glance
of the King’s courtesan,
who was strangely absent
from her stool near the window,
where she often sat, weaving.
I have clutched her in love,
these six months past,
and could not strangle a shudder
to see such beauty displaced.
If the eyes see, they saw me blanch,
at the elevation of her eye
from our shared soft pillow
to mere metallic display.
I am called to a meeting at eight.
My eye, such an average brown,
may yet be raised to the crown.
PS Cottier
Rhysling nominations: ‘Mouthing off’
March 25, 2021
Very happy that two of my poems have been nominated for the Rhysling Awards, which are annual awards for the best speculative poetry published in the previous calendar year. The award is organised by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, based in the United States. Poems are nominated by members of the SFPA (but you can’t nominate your own poems) and published in The Rhysling Anthology. The editor of this year’s anthology is Alessandro Manzetti. Members vote for their favourite poems in two categories. This week’s poem has been nominated in the short category. I think you can guess that the other poem, which I’ll post next week, is in the long category!
Both poems nominated were published in my book Monstrous, Interactive Press, 2020. You can see all of the nominated poems here. Some of them can be read by clicking on the title. Very happy to see at least one other Australian poet there, Jenny Blackford, and Tim Jones, of New Zealand. Go Southern Hemisphere!
Mouthing off
She’s a shark, you know, a tiny one,
armed with milk teeth and coins.
She severs fingers, not legs,
hiding in lawnmowers, which she stops,
until an enquiring hand reaches
to unblock the green-clogged blades.
She strikes, starts the engine,
and the dumb machine gets the blame.
No-one sees her, flying off with the digit —
they mistake her sharp chortle for canaries,
the rattle of a hula hoop of surplus teeth
is heard as a cicada’s solo. She shimmies,
perched on a convenient tree,
and tucks into her well-earned, self-saucing snag.
Delightfully light, she flits on,
gathers a few more teeth, threads them,
bites a few puppies, enjoys the way
that the local pitbulls get the flak.
Her original teeth were removed long ago
in a futile attempt to stop her munching
on fingers, toes, and pets like candy.
She moved into kiddies’ teeth;
a penny there, then a dollar or a Euro.
She enjoys endless, free-market chomping,
glueing a new set every Sunday,
formed from that sweet, calcium-rich bandolier.
If a knife misses carrot
and finds flesh, it is surely
our invisible sprite who abbreviates the hand.
Carpenters have felt a sudden
blunting of their grip as ‘a chisel slipped’,
but the wound is surprisingly multi-edged.
A tiny rose of white thorn-petals removed
the formerly useful pointer, or mere pinkie,
if it was only time for a hasty snack.
Just recently, she has diversified,
depositing a few teeth into the ears
of the children who put them under pillows,
investing in her profession’s future.
They dream of fingers. They dream of wings.
PS Cottier
Tuesday Poem: Jazz, and the Rhysling anthology
April 29, 2018
Jazz
Sax snaking
between notes,
tonguing air for directions,
poisonously honeyed
ears overflowing
quick thickening
and her voice,
both glacier and moraine
digging cool deep
graves of swoon,
lowering us in,
willingly, longingly
noise-swaddled
now punctuated by
exhortations of snare,
the metal finesse
of the cymbal
so jaggedly round
sweet clanging infraction
their fingers, her larynx
lynx swift yet subtle,
pouncing syncopation
delivers gasp-slaps
on listeners’ lobes —
we clap pauseless poise
PS Cottier
It’s so very hard to write about music, but I continue to try!
In other news, my poem ‘Lycium Barbarum’ which first appeared in the journal Umbel & Panicle is now published in the Rhysling anthology, which contains poems nominated for the Rhysling Award, a yearly award for poems of a speculative nature. The awards are organised by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, based in the US. Speculative poetry includes science fiction, horror (mine is a humorous horror poem featuring werewolves), fantasy and sundry weirdnesses. Lovely to see it there.
(Image By User:Villanueva at hu.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons)
Tuesday poem: Excalibur’s Lament
January 17, 2018
This one is via link. ‘Excalibur’s Lament’ is one of a number of poems on the theme Arthuriana, which is the title of the latest edition of Eye To The Telescope. Adele Gardner has edited this issue, and I am finding it fascinating to see how other poets approached re-telling, or re-imagining, the world of the round table.
Eye To The Telecope is an on-line journal of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, based in the USA, which has members in other countries. (Including at least one in the Grand Duchy of Canberra.) Scroll down to find my poem, and enjoy reading all the issue.
Tuesday poem: He wouldn’t know a poem…
August 9, 2016
He wouldn’t know a poem…
…if it had a business card that said A. Poem
(‘read me and weep’) which it presented to him
while waving a bright purple beret under his nose
(which organ is unable to detect the whiff of poesy)
while reciting itself, excitedly or coolly,
while pouring itself a sixth large glass of wine
(which would be hard, because of clutched beret and card case,
except that it would first return the beret to its poeting head,
at such an interesting angle, and would put the card case back
in a voluminous tote bag, full of its brother and sister poems
gathered into slim books which are now remaindered)
while squatting and shitting lines of the purest gold.
He just wouldn’t know it,
for what it seems to be.
P.S. Cottier
Talk to the beret
Now I could have the heading ‘nasty little poem’ for that but I’ve become a tad bored with that self-generated meme.
***
I’m been working on a little manuscript of fantasy poems at the moment; more about that anon. Speaking of that type of thing, there’s a nice competition on at the moment, run by the Science Fiction Poetry Association in the US, for poems of all lengths written in a speculative genre (fantasy, horror, science fiction etc.). If you write such things, why not have a go? It is only $2 (that’s the ‘somewhat more valuable than the Australian $ at the moment, but we’ll see after their election, American $’) to enter. You don’t have to be a member of the SFPA to enter (I am a member), and it would be lovely to have more Antipodean entries.
It closes at the end of the month, and entries can be lodged on-line.
PS Cottier 