Sundown by Debbie Moorhouse

A bird this deep in the heart of the city was a wonder enough for one day.

At first blink, it was a scrap of fabric or cardboard worn out of shape by heat and rain. At second blink, a sparrow. Trailing my fingers along the blistering shopfronts, blinking eyes open, eyes shut, I almost didn't notice it had feathers in time to avoid treading on it. A dirty cock sparrow, grey with accumulated layers of dust, its eyes still wide and bright.

No sign of any struggle; it lay crushed and spent in a bend where the pavement was wider than normal. The hot wind, or perhaps the ceaseless movement of the crowd, had pushed it into a gap between two paving slabs.

I shuffled round it, opening my eyes only the fraction necessary to see where it lay. This was the shortest route to the hospital, but it took the full brunt of the sun's glare.

At third blink, I saw the bird was alive.

"Moron," someone whispered as he elbowed me aside. Despite his aerator, the word was clearly articulated. I caught a glimpse of his eyes above the mask as he glanced at me; red-rimmed, they wept the grit driven on the wind.

Nobody I cared to see.

The bird hadn't moved, though perhaps it had blinked, or turned an eye. Its broken wings were still.

Head down, arms jerking to and fro at his sides, another man walked straight into me. The strap holding his aerator stuck up out of his hair like an unexpected tail. He inched along me, his breaths rasping in his throat, then resumed his march.

A siren's despairing wail reminded me I was on my way to see Chris before he died.

What was keeping life in this bird? Why didn't it just give up and let go? Like others I'd rescued from cats, which had quivered and pulsed on the edge of freedom, then died in my hands. I wondered if I should stamp on it and put it out of its misery. But was it suffering? Its bright, quick eye gave no clues. Maybe I was too much of a coward, anyway. I walked on, leaving it lying there, alive.

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Cosmonaut's Last Day by Jamie Dee Galey

(art)

Painsharing by John Walters

In a transparent protective cocoon, twenty-four met to mourn the dying Earth. The bloated sun above them cast its pale red light on the charred landscape.

The invitation had been sent to members of all the outer colonies, but most had ignored it, or scorned it, or been unable to understand it.

The mourners came from many different worlds, and had adapted themselves to suit the environment in which they lived; no common ground could be found, therefore, until they agreed, in honor of the occasion, to assume classic human form, half of them female and half male.

"What requiem can we offer?" one said.

Many ideas were proposed.

"We can close the Earth in sealant, protecting it for all eternity."

"But look at what is left. Is it really worth preserving?"

"We can dance! We can create a multi-sensory display and each of us can perform a farewell ballet."

But several said that they did not know how to dance, nor did they desire to.

"We can inject antimatter into the core, causing a tremendous explosion, and send copies of the event to all the outer colonies as memorials."

"But such an action could be misinterpreted. It is one thing to allow the Earth to die; it is another to kill it ourselves."

"We can commit suicide one by one, each in our own unique aesthetic manner, thus symbolizing the death of the Earth."

"But we have not come here to end our lives, but only to offer our respect to the planet that gave birth to our ancestors."

They argued back and forth but could reach no agreement, until one of them who had decided to call herself Hileila said, "We are missing the point. The importance of Earth to us is not the ball of matter itself, but the people who once called it their home. We have a database of everyone who has lived and died on this planet since records were kept. I propose that we slip through time and find them one by one and show them appreciation by loving them."

"All of them?

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A Yellow Sun with a Purple Crayon by Michelle Garren Flye

"Draw me a yellow sun," you say, handing me a purple crayon.

It's an impossible request, of course, but I try anyway.

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A Problem With The Law by Neil Davies

1.

I am hiding in the judge's cupboard.

I am behind a bag of sugar.

I am behind a bag of a sugar in the cupboard hiding.

It is the judge's cupboard.

I am hiding.

I am hiding in the judge's cupboard behind a bag of sugar because I do not want the judge to see me.

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Trying to Make Coffee by William Doreski

Trying to make coffee, I brew a batch of chlorine gas, a bitter stinging that escapes my kitchen and drifts through town, burning and scarring everyone who breathes it. A few susceptibles die writhing, weeping for their mothers. A police car crashes into a mailbox.

The fire department's ladder truck rolls into the river and hisses like a wounded hippopotamus.

Victims turn green and thrust their heads into snowbanks to snuff the heat.

They find relief by breathing the cold moisture, and hardly care if they drown.

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Fade In Fade Out by Beverly A. Jackson

I love how they do that in the movies.

It's a close-up of a staircase, then the doorknob!

The music soars, and you know it's coming but you're not sure what. Somebody's climbing.

Somebody's at the door. Something is out there.

Isn't that what we dread? And pray for?

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Changing Destiny by Fefa

(art)

Songs Of The Dead by Sarah Singleton and Chris Butler

Light splashed bars of white on the surface of the black water in the gutter. The pale roots of violets trailed in the moist, smeared layers of soil, city dust, and greenish effluent from the market. Thin threads of blood, clogged and dark, embroidered the thicker currents of mud and slurry. So much to see.

The lowing of the beasts, distinct here, rose up in the London street to disturb the boy. He looked up, shading his eyes. The return of spring had renewed the sun's vigour. In descent, the fire wheel spilled skeins of bright gold across the shining rooftops. If he did not start back now, his mother would worry.

On a clear day, the angels could have pointed to any one of the London villages. But now, new buildings came sprouting from the soil. Curious suburban fabulations. Complete with Greek columns fashioned in plaster, already soaking up veins of damp. Pretensions, his father said, of the traders. Snatching a piece of land for a scaled-down villa. The gaps in the landscape had filled in, and the random patchwork of the cityscape stretched as far as he could see.

The boy tucked his sketch into his pocket, and set off again. He made good progress along the street. Two old men puffed past, carrying a sedan chair. A thin, white-gloved hand lolled from the window, catching his eye. The curtain was drawn, a tatty brown brocade, and the woman's fingers tapped restlessly on the faded paintwork. The sedan stopped before a coffee house. A voice. The curtain twitched. Intrigued, the boy stepped closer, keen to catch a glimpse of the woman inside. One of the porters scurried into the coffee house, shoulders stooped. When the door opened, laughter erupted, along with a tide of smoke and snuff and the hot, prickly aroma of stewed coffee.

A body banged against the door. A large man, in a jacket fashioned with burgundy, livid purple, and gold, with a face bright pink through smudged layers of white paint, the mouth soft and red, dribbles on the chin. The man's heavy torso contracted and convulsed. He pressed his hand to his mouth, an effort to contain some fierce digestive struggle. He bent double. He retched. A stream of hot, meaty vomit burst from his lips, splattering onto the pavement.

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The Bird & The Ghost by Sarah Coyne

(art)

One in Ten Thousand by Athena Workman

I waited four hundred sixty-one days to kill him, and when I did, he didn't even know it. Just got up and walked right out of the apartment like back when he used to work the nine-to-five shift at DentaDyne. Instead of wearing an overcoat, he wore the syringe that I'd forgotten to remove, and it bobbed and banged against his arm like a tiny, underdeveloped appendage.

I killed him again when he got home; after I'd paced the apartment for hours, using the sun on the wall through our single window as a time guide like the ancients did. The glowing orb had already disappeared over the other side of the high-rise by the time he returned, bags of skin pulling down his eyes, the syringe lost. They'd given me another, just in case the first one's dosage wasn't high enough, and I got him again after he sat on the couch. As he blinked and the television sprang on, I sank the needle into his flesh, right through his shirt into the tough part of his shoulder. Again, I fled to the bathroom, locking myself in and shrinking down by the tub, unable to face what I'd done.

I found him in the kitchen an hour later, an opened jar of peanut butter before him on the table, the loaf of bread still sealed in its vacuum pack. As usual, he'd forgotten how to open it.

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Invitation To Kaohsiung by Allen McGill

The envelope with Taiwanese postage arrived in August 2004 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where I was living at the time. I was somewhat curious, but assumed it was just the kind of ad I occasionally received from a Hong Kong tailor I'd once visited.

When I read the enclosed letter I was still uncertain, since it seemed to make no sense. It stated that I was being invited to something called The First World Poetry Conference in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, March 2005, with almost all expenses paid (a bit shy on the airfare), including hotels, meals, transfers, sightseeing, et al. I was also invited to read from my work if I wished. The theme was to be Land and Sea in Poetic Harmony.

I'd had a good deal of my fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction published. I'd also written a novel, had two of my plays produced, and had written and published a great deal of poetry. But the letter didn't say which of my works had prompted this invitation, or where my potential hosts-to-be had seen it. A scam? Perhaps, but the invitation mentioned nothing about sending them money up front. I checked to see if I could glean anything from the internet that would hint I was being conned, but found nothing to further my suspicion. This was the "First" conference, after all, and there'd not likely be much, if anything, posted seven months prior to the event.

Having worked in the travel field for most of my life, I consider myself to be pretty well traveled. I had visited some sixty countries by then, including many in Asia, but hadn't been to Taiwan and had never even heard of Kaohsiung. So, after some deliberation, I returned the application accepting the invitation, then awaited further developments. The response came quickly, via email this time.

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4 Short Parables Revolving Around the Theme of Travel by A.B. Goelman

I. Frequent Flier

When third-generation superhero Walter Bennett Remington III swooped down from the sky, supporting the 747 on his back, no one applauded. Not the people in the airplane, not their worried relatives on the ground. Everyone knew about the second law of thermodynamics. They weren't sure of the details, but they knew the basics: all power has to come from somewhere. Each time power changes hands, you lose a little of it.

And they knew where the power that had Walter swooping in the sky, grinning and pirouetting, had come from. It had come from them. The passengers felt little--smaller than they used to--as they climbed down the stairs to the cement landing pad. One older man pressed his hand into his back. "I already had a slipped disc," he told no one in particular, "but it hurts worse now."

Walter pretended not to hear, although his super hearing made it impossible not to. Instead he flew off to his family's Ski Chateau of Solitude in the mountains of Switzerland.

"The world doesn't appreciate us," he told his mother. She was halfway down the mountain on her new short skis, but she heard him just fine. She skidded to a halt, kicking up a plume of previously untouched powder. "Great skiing today, Wally," she told him. "Really great. Pure powder."

"Don't call me Wally, Mother." Walter flew past her to the highest mountain in the Swiss Alps. The view would have been spectacular for anyone, but with Walter's super-vision it was incredible. He could see most of the inhabited world. Billions of humans going about their business. Working in factories, farms, offices. Sitting on the street begging for pennies and walking down the sidewalk in their business suits. And they all hated him, and the rest of his type.

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The Doctrine of the Arbitrariness of the Sign by Shweta Narayan

"Spli-pli-plitter!" Andrew called to the low grey sky. A big wet droplet exploded on his nose, and another in his hair, then it was all around; a great torrent, as if someone had pulled the plug out of a lake in the sky to send water soaking into his coat and jeans and hair. And sister. He grinned.

She glared at him. "Okay, so it's raining, so come on."

"Not just raining, Tess." His grin widened, partly for the joy of wetness, partly because it would annoy her. "Spli-plitter raining. A deluge." He played the word around in his mouth, luxuriating in the sound and feel of it and its echo in the beat of water on pavement.

"Like I said. Raining." She started walking.

He caught up easily. He'd been growing lately. "Not any rain," he said. "Big wet warm drops that drench, and break open into little drippy droplets when they hit you. Splitter rain."

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Media Hype by Jamie Dee Galey

(art)

The Infinite Monkeys Protocol by Lavie Tidhar

She chased him from one empty shell account to another, tracing phony netmail nodes, weaving through PABXs, through telephone exchanges, through backdoored commercial servers that shut down as she tried to pass through them, leaving the trail cold, forcing her to retrace her steps, to try again; but always he disappeared in the looping path that he had created for her through the networks, a path that seemed to spell out her name before at last it disappeared.

Sarita sat back in her chair and pressed her hands to her eyes. Her eyes felt loose in their sockets, like marbles made of biological tissue and left to float in a jar of formaldehyde.

She reached for her coffee. It was black and sugary and cold, and when she drank it, it was like being hit by a slow-moving tractor--an unpleasant experience, perhaps, but one that jolted her into a more involved awareness. She put down the coffee and picked up a copy of the Mutation Engine's code. She had looked at that code every night now for the past four months and thirteen days, admiring the writing--it was what computer programmers would call elegant--but mostly she looked at one line of ASCII text which had been left there almost, one might say, unnecessarily.

It was not part of the code; it was a message. It said, 'To Sarita, who wanted to have a virus named after her.'

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Moments Of Brilliance by Jason Stoddard

Sensation, random, like fractal noise.

Blinding light. Strange, biting smells. Chittering metallic noises. Colorful shapes that move in soothing smooth patterns.

Being lifted by rough warm hands and held close; nonsense syllables repeated, soft. Something wet and salty, falling, striking.

Movement; fast, loud noises.

Then connection, activation, integration. The feeling of being filled. Basic activity routines. Facial tracking. Response algorithms. When to cry for maximum distractive value. When not to urinate. Who to focus on and at what times.

The hazy sketch of Mission and Why, the only why needed.

But.

The connection to the outside voices, the data, the storm of information, glittering and shimmering and dancing. Reaching for the shiny prize, not able to let it pass by.

Diving in for meaning, decoding the surfaces and sounds and touches of the world. Beyond the Why. Beyond the Mission. Diving and diving and diving. A billion times a minute.

Meaning flows in:

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As a Child by Kristine Ong Muslim

Before we read his name in the headlines and before half of the jury cried when his only surviving victim was put on the stand and before he was electrocuted so we could forget about how he had used his hands,

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Belly Busters by Bruce Boston and Larry Dickison

(art)

Cutting A Figure by Charlie Anders

My father couldn't hide his disappointment that four years of Women's Studies had failed to make me a Real Woman. "Mary. If you'd majored in archeology, they'd have given you a pick-axe and a pith hat, right? If you'd studied music, you'd have an instrument. So how come you're still so unwomanly?"

"So unwomanly," my mother chimed.

We sat in the Silver Swine, the overpriced greasy-spoon all parents took their kids to from Pennington College. My dad ate veal--to bait me--and my mom had a single artichoke heart. She was the spindly vizier to his opulent caliph. In my smallness, I resembled mom, but I had the germs of dad's ebullience.

I tried to explain that Women's Studies wasn't about learning to embody stereotypes or archetypes, my body was my own, and maybe I'd choose a gender identity by the time I was my parents' age. Etc., etc., etc.

And meanwhile I had a goal. I dreamed of going to Africa and helping to fight the spread of AIDS and educate against female genital mutilation. I wanted to learn from African culture and do what I could to help the people there. I had no time to worry about my Hope Chest.

But none of my explanations swayed them. My dad unveiled a receipt from the clinic that he'd already paid to give me breast implants as a graduation present. My mom nodded and repeated the tail ends of his rants, Gilbert-and-Sullivan style, as he insisted I needed Upper Substance.

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No Motor Home by Kenneth Ryan

Our squatter's Cuddy

Cabin in the woods:

misplaced

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Past Due: Final Notice by Kenneth Ryan

When Kentucky caught fire they sent us to a mountaintop road too late for anything but boys diving low scattered in dirt,

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Fortune by Kenneth Ryan

My fingertip traces the cup of your palm, whorls whimsically the soft belly behind your knuckle,

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The Eternal's Last Request by Joshua Babcock

My name is Sofi. I did not always wish my father dead. For most of my young life, I served him faithfully, dutifully, as his chronicler. My father's name is Kratos. Throughout the width and breadth of Bahkshir, he was known as the Eternal.

I have been privy to many of Kratos' famous stories, either seeing them unfold myself or having them told to me from a firsthand perspective. My father never told me the tale of his genesis.

For generations, Kratos protected the countryside of Bahkshir from the Bahkshirin Sea to the mountains we call the Cradle of Antreous. He conquered the undead armies of the Beshevite necromancers, sealed away the malicious Archduke of Vengeance, and defeated the reptile goddess Severina. He was responsible for dispatching Orgus, the master of the onyx golem, and the demon steeds of Celops. There are thousands of other tales as well, and they have all been writ elsewhere, some even by my own hand.

Much of the courage and unquenchable altruism that my father had personified was dashed when the armies of the western Kingdom of Naskil arrived. They were headed by the great magus Malnorant, Tome of the Time-Siege gripped tight in his withered hand.

Kratos the Ageless had met with nothing but victory in his previous adventures. Yet, against the powers of the Tome, he found himself as weak and defenseless as we mortals.

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Where Water Fails by Rusty Barnes

Richard guesses Maggie is at it again. He hears the steady yammer of a mallet in the kitchen as she pounds meat against the rattly metal countertop. Once she'd gotten so mad at him she'd thawed out two entire freezer bags of venison tenderloin and beef steaks, beat them all into submission for hours. The next day she'd invited the Burnhams over for dinner, and she had made conversation about the latest shows, the church bazaar, but watched his face, covertly, every time he took a bite. She knew he'd noticed. When he asked her later why she was so fierce about it, she'd looked up at him sweetly and said, "Because it feels like I'm hitting you. Every time is one time I don't have to argue with you."

This pounding of meat. What has he done this time? He thinks back over the last twelve hours: nothing out of the ordinary, nothing at all. Waking, work, home.

The front-porch refrigerator is open, and a twelve-pack of soda still ringed in plastic sits on the concrete floor. Maggie usually fills the fridge, but why would she leave it open? He de-rings the soda, puts it in, and closes the door. It becomes more mysterious, this whole thing. He notices the mudroom light is off and the livingroom curtains are closed against the fading sunlight. There is no whir of washing machine or dryer. Lunchbox by the door, boots next to the lunchbox, hat and overshirt hung up. Still no singsong hello. No kiss.

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Dialogue with the Hollows of Your Body by Benjamin William Buchholz

When I am blind and very near to you in the vesper stillness of a cell, small and veiled from the street, through shiver, heat, arch of back and hips, pressure placed by the flat of your palms against the flat of my palms: speak.

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The Kiss by Konrad Kruszewski

(art)

Longs to Run by David Bulley

Imagine hurling yourself across January crust, skimming on top, reckless and loud. The bright full moon, slung low over the trees; the ruby blood spread across unbroken brilliant white snow. Think of gorging and fullness and contentment and the steam from your nose sending breath into the heavens, you a part of everything. Dream of life.

Think, next time at the grade-school mixer, when you realize that your child's teacher has spoken only to fourth-graders for so long she seems weirdly retarded, and the principal is instituting yet another "Peace Plan" for negotiating and "envisioning" and group problem-solving and anything, anything but fucking goddamned motherfucking stinking reading and writing! Look at cute Susie's mom all smarmy and stupid, lapping it up. Think, wouldn't it be nice to smell her fear? Just for a minute?

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Ah Those Letters in the Attics or Modern Lit by Lida Broadhurst

Come these women at some crossroads, not of boards. Flesh sags like melting ice cream as they drag upstairs to attics.

Believing they wish to clear away ripped lampshades, clothes rotting like buried shrouds, chairs with arms or legs snapped in two, they refuse to remember lovers dancing in unfamiliar patterns.

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Pepé In Critical Condition by Tomi Shaw

Redux: Vanilla Wafer

"Life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character."

He heard it in line at Starbucks that morning, pouring out of the sour mouth of a stickly old lady with frosty-purple-icing hair. Betty Boop popped into his head, his chuckle derisive. He ordered his coffee and stomped his loafers out the door without even bothering to listen to which cartoon character she figured would improve her life. She was the antithesis of Betty Boop, and that was all he needed to know.

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Having Fun at the Party by Fran Giordano

(art)

The first day of the last day my face fell off by Rohith Sundararaman

my mother woke me up one day with my face in her hand it fell off, she said, holding it like garbage i looked at it and then i looked at mother she blushed so freud was right i ran and hid in the closet

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Sown Seeds by Errid Farland

Mr. Popperoy dispensed his wacky-old-man wisdom in a jumble of disconnected words, a Vedic sort of chicken-scratch that sometimes annoyed and sometimes entertained Trace, depending on his mood.

That day, they rolled out and on like tumbleweeds set loose by thirst and heat and time, and they vexed Trace more than anything else, preoccupied as he was with his wife's latest discontent.

"Vishnu!" Mr. Popperoy said, like a sneeze, then he followed it with, "God bless you!" Then he chuckled.

"Real funny, there, Mr. Popperoy," Trace said.

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She Dreams in Colors, She Dreams in Hope by F. John Sharp

Pasha removes bread and dried fruit from a canvas lunch bag and lays them on a napkin, arranging the pieces until the composition pleases her. She usually places the bread on the left and the fruit on the right, but she reverses it whenever she is about to work on Goran, like today.

"Look at Pasha," says Goran, who dumps his food onto the square metal table. "See how content she is that again she has no meat for her lunch."

Raisa frowns. "Goran, you should spend more time worrying about meeting your quota and putting meat on your own table. Leave Pasha alone for a change."

"I think Goran is jealous of Pasha always making quota," says Niki. "How long since Goran made quota? A month?"

"I made it a week ago Thursday."

"So twice in a month then?" Raisa says. A threadbare blue babushka exaggerates the movement of her head as she nods to make her point. The dim light makes her graying hair look rusty.

Goran grumbles and bites off a chunk of day-old bread, which crunches and resists his efforts. Pasha continues to eat as though the conversation hasn't been about her, her mouth turned slightly upward, giving her the appearance either of being satisfied with her circumstances or of waiting patiently for an opening.

They sit, together as always, in the block-walled lunchroom with small windows, high up, with a view of only the hazy sky. Bare bulbs cast harsh shadows on the fifty or so workers who take the middle lunch period. It is their only break from a twelve-hour shift making metal parts that can be used for cars or trucks or tractors or tanks. They are never told which.

"Besides," Raisa says, "I think that Pasha doesn't much care for meat, do you, Pasha?"

Pasha finishes chewing and swallowing a raisin. "Meat or no meat, it's no matter to me. My food is good enough." She takes another raisin and chews deliberately.

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Jack Rabbit by Jamie Dee Galey

(art)

Chicken by John Mantooth

I learned about defiance, real defiance, on a school bus. I was seventeen. That was the year I started drinking, the year my mother took my car keys away from me after I came home drunk. She waited until I was sleeping one off and hid them, knowing I wasn't about to give them to her, nor was I going to stop drinking. Not then. Becoming sober was still decades of misery away.

So I rode the cheese wagon, mornings and afternoons, sitting in the back with a couple of delinquent ninth-graders who looked up to me because I told them the sordid details of my life, embellishing most of them to the point of absurdity. But the more I embellished, the more the two boys, Davy and Ty-Ty, wanted to hear.

I told them that I was on the bus because some drug dealer associated with the Mafia took my car when I told him to fuck off. I told them that I had a sweet deal lined up with a guy who was going to sell me a brand new Dodge Viper. I'd be getting it in a couple of weeks. I told them about my brother Steve, who worked in the pits at Talladega, and how he always got me pussy when I went to visit him. I told them that nobody could tell me what to do, and I meant nobody.

"What about Champ?" Davy asked. I looked up at our bus driver. We called him Champ, and I always assumed it was because he used to box, but perhaps I was wrong. Either way, his big forearms, thick black mustache, and scarred face always gave the impression that he was not one to be crossed. I'd only seen one kid try it since I'd been riding, and he was dealt with swiftly and soundly. Champ threw the bus into park, slung off his seatbelt, and stormed back to the boy's seat. The boy cringed into his seat, petrified.

"Sure, he can tell me all he wants, but I'm not going to do it." And then, for effect, I added, "I'm not scared of that old man," while in truth I was terrified by the prospect of crossing him.

Champ had one rule on the bus: stay in your seat. So it didn't surprise me when Davy called me on my big mouth.

"Stand up then," he said. "Stand up and we'll see how tough you are."

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The Tale that Launched a Thousand Ships by Janrae Frank

There is a small village called Summersnow up near Bluedog Pass. A race of little people called the Badree Nym live there. They are a magical race with large pointed ears, fair skin, and freckled faces, with hair that ranges in color from pink to blue and even to black. A little old man abides there--no one knows his name--and every day he sits beneath a spreading oak, smoking his pipe and telling stories of his adventures. People--humans, mostly--come from far and wide to hear them. In certain seasons, even minstrels and bards can be found sitting at his knee and listening with rapt attention.

One day three human kings came to see the little old man, having heard of a tale that he had told about a wondrous magical sleeping princess and the horrible monster that guarded the enchanted castle where she lay.

The little old man was always happy to have someone new ask for his stories, and he told them all about the sleeping princess. She had long golden hair and skin as pale as milk. Her castle stood on a distant island, in a grove of Idyn trees that bloomed yearround and bore rainbow fruits like those that grew in the sun-god's garden. A giant's stair carved from matchless jade led up to the castle gates. A feathered dragon laired in the courtyard, guarding his captive prize.

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Poetry Code by Robert Peake

Many comparisons have been made over time of software source code to poetry. The Perl Haiku Contest, for example, promotes writing very compact yet expressive poems using a very compact yet expressive programming language. There is even the phrase "code poet," which means an exceptional programmer. However, little has been said of the ways in which poetry, written in a human language, might be similar to software source code, which is designed to be interpreted by machines. That is, no one talks about "poetry code."

When I proposed the idea that poetry might be similar to source code on my website, I encountered a kind of knee-jerk indignation.iii This pleases me because it indicates a certain reverence for the mysterious and intangible qualities of poetry, a kind of sticking up for the art. However, I think this reverence is often extended to encompass the perceived subjectivity of poetry in a somewhat misguided way. That is, people tend to assume on instinct that poetry and code are so necessarily different that it is somehow an insult to poetry to compare it to software. I suggest that a good deal can be achieved by questioning this assumption and exploring the similarities further.

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