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    Asimov's Science Fiction 12/01/10

    Page 20
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      their busy marketplaces, starved eyes

      followed us everywhere, and delicate,

      whorled ears strained to swivel

      toward our songs.

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      Poetry

      SAILOR

      Mark Rich

      Softer, sailor, loosen silk-thin filmcloth:

      slip away less speedily

      on Solar-zephyr-tautened

      topsail. Mission to the Oort—

      perhaps—but planetoids and cometary orbs

      will fill that darkness eons yet to come:

      they will await your probing sensors still

      for long millennia.

      But how long do we have

      to gaze upon that billowed square

      of glare-reflective, artful,

      microns-thin ingenious slip of engineering?

      Days, perhaps, or weeks—

      moments only, in the panoramic march

      of movements in the astronomic clock.

      Stay a little that we may gaze

      upon such scientific splendor

      pushed by ions one way only:

      away. Slower, sailor, stay—.

      As if you could, with curiosity

      fulfillingly full-filling tautly

      your broad silver sail

      that pulls you outward.

      Our yearning gravity-embrace

      is nothing to you. Go. Forgetfulness

      will come—when your transmitted images

      of what you seek

      arrive to dazzle us

      who must be left behind.

      Copyright © 2010 Mark Rich

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      Poetry

      BLUEPRINT FOR A DOMED CITY

      Jessica Taylor

      From outside

      you can hardly see the city at all:

      just a drop of glass

      blocking off the horizon.

      Of course, there is no outside.

      Inside, buildings stand tall,

      shining with safety;

      the streets are free from wind and rain,

      the sky glimmers.

      The dome itself was built on a clear day,

      as regulations suggested.

      They erected scaffolding,

      created security

      out of molecules and atoms.

      There is no forever in the city.

      The ends of space are clear from inside.

      And the ends of time as well.

      When lovers fight

      there is nowhere for them to go.

      Likewise families,

      friends. This city keeps

      all its citizens.

      Copyright © 2010 Jessica Taylor

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