Introduction by Bruce Boston & Marge Simon
Introduction Another year has passed, and we are pleased to offer you the annual speculative poetry issue of The Pedestal Magazine. We received over 1200 poems to consider for this issue. As we read them, we each put our own “Maybe” or “No” with the poem, along with “Personal” for those poets we knew or […]
Jane Williams – The Memory Machines
The Memory Machines I’ve heard rumors that some of them have turned, disabled their compliancy chips. Deaf to your dying wish. Seems they just want to test your mettle. Plain and simple. At the exact moment you decide on the climax of some grand passion or cause for your eternal rerun, you’ll feel a tiny […]
James Robinson – Halloween in New Orleans
Halloween in New Orleans Crippled oaks hunch beneath a yellow moon and hover over crumbling crypts in Lafayette Cemetery where F. Scott Fitzgerald’s eyes gaze beyond paradise from a window’s wavy glass on a second floor across Prytania. Empty streetcars rumble down Saint Charles where widowed ghosts wander in mansions behind the dark windows of […]
Jennifer Crow – Across a Storm-Dark Sky
Across a Storm-Dark Sky You saw a dragon, etched like fire and arcing across a storm-dark sky. You saw a dragon, and your heart lurched in your chest, stumbled like a drunk, dipped and rose the way birds do, startled from their nests at sunrise. When you blinked, the shadow cast by its light seared […]
Sarah Shirley – Think Tank
Think Tank Come closer, don’t be shy, and here she is – what do you think? I know it’s strange, her floating there in all that liquid, hair fanning and swirling, but it keeps her fresh and ready. We grew her from a client who didn’t approve of the final dimensions so we made another […]
