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My poem "Di Vayse Pave" (די ווײַסע פּאַווע) has been accepted by Moral Relativism Magazine. It's the first poem I've finished since my birthday; it is partly in dialogue with Yiddish folksong. The magazine is still reading through the end of the month, too: check out the guidelines. Have you been wrong before?

My poem "Tapping the Vine" has been selected for reprint in the 2011 Dwarf Stars Anthology. I wrote it for time_shark and tithenai and mer_moon published it, so blame them.

Why, yes, I do think I want to read a thought-provoking steampunk mashup of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest, thank you.

I wish I had spent the weekend several places elsewhere, but Case Histories was fun.

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

There really is, apparently, an inevitable tendency of all Star Trek fiction toward slash. Yesterday I read Vonda McIntyre's novelization of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) because it was at the MIT Swapfest; I wouldn't call it one of the great reads of the ages, but it's full of material that doesn't appear in the film, from an entire backstory for Saavik to a throwaway scene during the rescue of Chekov where Gillian makes like she's been interrupted mid-threesome with Kirk and McCoy in order to explain what they're all doing in a hospital closet together, half-dressed in medical scrubs. (What, you didn't believe me?) There's also a whole thread of follow-up from the previous film, including a scene in the epilogue in which McCoy crashes the Vulcan embassy to talk to Spock, who hasn't been returning his calls—their relationship has been weird ever since Spock came back from the dead, not only because Spock is still reintegrating himself with his memories, but because the experience of carrying Spock's katra and then undergoing extended sessions of mind-work to disentangle the two of them (because the fal-tor-pan wasn't a one-shot solution) has left McCoy badly shaken. He's not convinced they're really, finally out of one another's heads, and even if he were sure about his own boundaries, he'd still feel awkward around Spock, because the process of sorting out which mental bits were whose brought into the open all sorts of things about himself that he'd frankly rather not have acknowledged, let alone had to share with Spock and a roomful of Vulcan therapists. He's not good at being objective about himself; the more he felt judged for his emotions, the more emotional he felt himself becoming in self-defense; and after the politely blank total brush-off that his tentative efforts to raise the subject met with ("It would be impossible . . . without a common frame of reference"), he's pretty sure that being soul-close to a cranky, illogical human just squicked Spock out. The fact that the half-Vulcan now makes a lot more sense to him isn't helping. They still haven't had a real conversation since The Wrath of Khan. So there he is in the sand garden of the Vulcan embassy, trying to explain how much it unsettles him to understand Spock without thinking about it, to know Spock must have the same understanding of him, the fear of losing himself in someone else again, and all I can think is, Traditionally, this conversation ends when one of you kisses the other. Which doesn't happen, of course. It's still canon. But seriously.