lis pendens

Poetry

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lis pendens

Mike Allen

Issue: 26 June 2006

I filed suit for your soul today.

You felt the service in your bones.

If by tonight you don't respond,

Your spirit will become my own.

Who will stop the judgment nigh

And represent you in your plight?

The counsel who will face this court

Cannot be hired in noonday light;

So summoned, come, quaking pro se

And foolishly fight this complaint.

The jury picked to hear your plea

Will not be stricken of my taint.

No verdict cap or tort reform

Will curb the cost this judge demands

Once you've demurred and left your fate

Unbalanced in his scaly hands.

I sued you for your soul this eve

And placed a lien upon your bones;

No matter how just your appeal,

Your spirit will become my own.

Mike Allen's most recent project is the offbeat fiction and poetry anthology MYTHIC. He's also the longtime editor of the speculative poetry journal Mythic Delirium. A new short story, "The Music of Bremen Farm," just appeared in the first issue of Cabinet des Fées, and his newest poetry collections, Disturbing Muses and Strange Wisdoms of the Dead, are both available from Wildside Press. More of Mike's poems can be found in the Strange Horizons archives.

About Mike Allen

Mike Allen is president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and editor of the speculative poetry journal Mythic Delirium. With Roger Dutcher, Mike is also editor of The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, which for the first time collects the Rhysling Award-winning poems from 1978 to 2004 in one volume. His newest poetry collection, Disturbing Muses, is out from Prime Books, with a second collection, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead, soon to follow. Mike's poems can also be found in Nebula Awards Showcase 2005, both editions of The 2005 Rhysling Anthology, and the Strange Horizons archives.

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