I am pleased to announce that Cold Flashes: Literary Snapshots of Alaska, edited by Michael Engelhard (University of Alaska Press) has been released! This anthology contains flash fiction and short nonfiction pieces set in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Among them is my flash fiction story "Turnagain," posted below.

This lovely collection also features black-and-white photographs enhancing the mood cast by the tight, powerful prose. Digital and e-book versions are available. For more information and to purchase, please visit: http://www.uaf.edu/uapress/browse/detail/index.xml?id=401 

Yeah, I know, Avatar Week on my blog was in early January, but I have more to say, so I hope you'll indulge me, imagining, if it helps, that we live on Venus, where a week is 819 days. With Avatar scheduled for theatrical re-release this August, the film remains near the surface of American cultural consciousness, due to resurface again, as soon as everyone has absorbed the new Twilight movie.

In my first post on Avatar, I argued that a great part of the movie's popularity stems from its cultural relevance, specifically to American cultural mythos. I'd like to expand on this and focus on two opposing forces that make this a highly unsettled text, able to engage and enrage viewers on all sides of the political spectrum. Those two opposing forces are an overt challenge to colonialism/imperialism and the going native trope.

Many viewers have made the leap between the Na'vi and Native Americans. It is always shifty ground to analyze a speculative text in terms of allegory; Tolkien, for example, famously decried any claims that Lord of the Rings contains direct allegory. (The Ring of Power does not equal the atom bomb, however many parallels it may share with that piece of war machinery.) Although I am sensitive to this issue, I too made the leap between Na'vi and a Hollywood representation of Native Americans, as I believe Cameron wanted his American viewers to do. 

No, this post is not about me. With a title like that, it just wouldn't be modest.

This post is about my friend and mentor, Quintan Ana Wikswo, whose latest piece came out yesterday in The Kenyon Review. It's a short short that will cast tendrils into your grey matter and draw your mind back to it again and again. (Aside: if that metaphor led you to think, "Yes, much like the chip Scorpius placed in John Crichton's brain," then you, like me, are a very big geek.)

I invite you to check out Quintan's latest at: http://www.kenyonreview.org/kro_full.php?file=wikswo.php

I recently posted the text of my poem that was censored from KXCI's A Poet's Moment. In place of "Lament of a Double Bass," they did air another poem of mine, which I wanted to share here. I wrote it in response to a prompt given on Robert Lee Brewer's blog, Poetic Asides, which is hosted by Writer's Digest. Come to think of it, this is a love poem, so it's the perfect day to post it. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!

So We Decided to Take Over the Block,

I'm interrupting Avatar Week to bring you some news: this week, I became the first poet ever to be censored from KXCI's show A Poet's Moment. Although the show's host, Ron Cipriani, recorded three of my poems and had planned to air the second one for the usual cycle of time slots, someone else at the station decided to pull it after the first airing.

Although I heard that the problematic phrase "blue balled" was cited as the reason for censoring the poem, I rather agree with my friend Kristen, who suggests that the poem's overall sensuality may have triggered the pushback, since our Puritanically rooted culture is uncomfortable with sensuality and eager to make the leap from there to sexuality. The words "blue balled" would be easier to latch onto and complain about than the poem's overall tone. Ron is playing the other poem of mine that he recorded this week, one that I would call a lark, instead of this better poem, written in the voice of my husband's musical instrument, which, I imagined, might be jealous of me. That's right, this is a poem about the relationship between a musical instrument and a musician, and it was too racy for radio. So, without further ado, here is the poem.

Yeah, I see you, dude, and you're kind of an asshole.

This is what I would expect Neytiri's response to be after she makes zahelou (hair lock) with Jake Sully. (By the way, why doesn't she know everything his mind after they mate? Possible continuity flaw, or maybe lack of explanation of zahelou). I have no problem with flawed characters; in fact, I prefer them. So I was willing to see how our notorious member of the Jarhead clan might evolve over the course of James Cameron's Avatar. In the end, I was not moved.

The theatrical release did not show enough of Jake's evolution. I had little sense of how he felt about being a traitor to the Na'vi while he was actually betraying them because the movie never shows him really freaking out about it. Almost as soon as he meets her, Jake clearly has feelings for Neytiri, the chief and shaman's daughter. Yet, Jake is not merely a passive member of the science team who "knew this would happen," as Neytiri discovers when the Sky People come to attack Home Tree. He actively performs recon for Colonel Quaritch, who is not his direct superior, but who asks Jake to spy on the Na'vi based on a sense of loyalty instilled by his military background. When the colonel, head of security for the mining base, asks Jake if he'll be a double agent and report to him, Jake agrees without any sign that it bothers him. It doesn't seem to bother him either when he provides structural details about Home Tree that will later allow the attack on it to succeeded.

I've seen it twice, and I have too much to say about Avatar to get it all out in one sitting. So I'm dubbing this week Avatar week. The first point I want to make is simple: Avatar and audience responses to it put one more nail in the coffin of the myth that speculative fiction is essentially "escapist," at least any more than any fiction is essentially escapist.

Avatar, which may be on track to become the highest-grossing movie of all time, is clearly engaging people en masse. Is this because the economy is bad and everyone wants to get away from the grind of everyday life?

Park Bench, a dangerous thing

to lie on [under normal circumstance]

he has shot me in the neck

One morning, after a night of dreamless sleep, Sasha was surprised to awaken in her bed and find herself transformed into a strange machine. Her fingers, which were once crude flesh, had become metal rods, sticky at the ends—perfect for filing. Her arm joints were soldered together on hinges. She stood up. Her breathing was flawlessly even and her heartbeat had lost its murmur. At her hips she found a monitor with mail merge on the toolbar. Sasha inspected her profile in the mirror and discovered her face to be a mask behind which gears turned in her mastoid unit, processing data received through her ocular chips. How long had this been happening? And how could she have failed to notice? Wires carried messages down to Sasha’s well-oiled toes. They moved when she told them to, but she could not feel a thing.

Yesterday, I recorded three poems for KXCI's A Poet's Moment, hosted by Ron Cipriani. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoy recording for radio. One of these poems, posted below, will be played several times this week on KXCI Tucson 91.3 FM. Ron is saving the other two for a rainy day.

If you're out of radio range from KXCI, you can still hear the program through their Web site, which streams the station live.

The following are the dates and times my poem "Willow, Alaska" will play on A Poet's Moment: