Tuesday Poem: Folds, by Jo Mills

infidels of the sun     we watch folds

in this restless land     bake our beliefs

do we enter the new dry     or last ice age

of our imaginings     bright technology

whispers down invisible lines     turns our gaze

to wormholes     sucks our dusty imagery

into temporal twists     spatial vortices

the thrill of discovery   minute gyroscopes

most perfectly sphered     measure dimples

our Earth’s plump rump     sitting in a pillow

time/space sags     beneath her weight

opens new dimensions     in our minds

Saturn grows a storm     or is it humanity

at play     at war with its shadows

breaking its fronts     in bombs and blood

we flee to these folds     in a restless land

while solar flares grow     bright alignments

underscore the shudders     of tectonic plates

we watch folds pucker     oceans drag and pound

ah, the memory of water     bittersoft chaos as if

Shiva’s hand falls     echoes our flight we dance

on moving carpets     while polar caps melt

on Mars     droplets dissolve into the mirror

of our desire for migrancy     beyond borders

of a world grown small     fragile to human touch

infidels of the sun     set longer sights

unlock fantasy’s rim     fear and hope

sand shifts beneath our feet     we watch folds

Credit note: "Folds" was published in The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, which I co-edited with P. S. Cottier (IP, 2014), and is reproduced by permission of the poet. The Stars Like Sand is available from the publisher and from amazon.com.au. If you're ordering through a bookshop that doesn't stock it, let them know the ISBN: 978-1-922120-78-6

Check out this excellent review of The Stars Like Sand in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Tim says: This is another of the fine poems we selected for The Stars Like Sand, and that would be quite enough reason to post it here, but there's another one: partly inspired by her inclusion in The Stars Like Sand and the quality of the anthology, Jo Mills decided to set up an international speculative poetry competition with very generous prizes. It's open for submissions now, and closes on 1 May. Check out the guidelines here:

https://interstellaraward.wordpress.com/interstellar-award-for-speculative-poetry/

About Jo Mills: Jo Mills is a speculative poet, short story writer and fantasy author (under the pen-name Joanna Fay). She recently founded Interstellar to host two annual awards for speculative poetry and fiction respectively, and to publish themed speculative fiction and poetry anthologies from 2016.

Jo lives in the Perth Hills, Western Australia, with her teenage son, two dwarf rabbits and a quail who thinks she's an eagle. She keeps an eye on the sky for starships and patiently awaits the arrival of her galactic family. Jo's author website can be found at http://joannafay.me/

The Hub Tuesday Poem: is Nest by Linda France, chosen by Helen McKinlay.