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      September 1, 2013Science FictionLesley Wheeler

      No jack at the nape of the neck, no Mars colony,
      no teleportation, no flying car jaunts
      with your friend the cyborg. However, you may
      own a cell phone so tiny you can’t see
      it without cochlear implants, requiring you
      to hire an immigrant child with delicate fingers
      to press its microscopic buttons.
       
      Don’t listen to me, a poet, specialist
      in memory not speculation. This future tense
      thing is just a game. Ridiculous to guess
      you will still read poems in the bathtub
      and the steam will make you feel sexy.
      Green hair today, you’ll decide, dictating
      commands to a sleek plastic coiffurator,
      thinking of moss sparkling deep in the book’s
      virtual glade. Water will stream
      off your skin as you emerge, laying down
      the words that transport you. Humidity
      makes tech buggy but moss likes moisture, just keeps
      softening, thickening, so real and verdant
      now, so clean-smelling, language falls away.

      from #38 - Winter 2012

      Lesley Wheeler

      “I’m addicted to the Book as Transporter Device—novels can certainly pull you into an alternate reality, but some poems can, too. ‘Science Fiction’ is about that experience of reading as absorption and transformation.”