Gene van Troyer is a past editor of Portland Review and Star*Line. His poetry and fiction has appeared in Poly: New Speculative Writing, Velocities, Last Wave, Amazing Stories, Asimov’s SF Magazine, The Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, The Rhysling Anthology, Snow Monkey, Strange Horizons, and other books and journals. He also edited with Grania Davis a collection of Japanese science fiction and fantasy stories in translation, Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese SF/F from Kurodahan Press, and Collaborations: A Collection of Collaborative Poetry from Ravenna Press. He is a native Oregonian transplanted to semi-tropical Okinawa, Japan.
Winter 2008
Table of Contents - Vol. IV, No. 4
Poetry Interview Translations Fiction Book Reviews
The Desert Falls
(here and there around Japan)
The desert falls in winter
Gobi dust
raining in on arid winter blows,
winds southeast from Siberia.
Yellow equinox
greets the turning march of spring
beneath the April sky.
The dislocated dust from Gobi falls
on all Japan. We see its yellow desertmark
on everything—the static sift
through hazing atmosphere
curtaining the sun
a film of dusty gossamer
on glass and metal carapace—
the desert falls and showers everyone.
It coats us like
a counterpointed steam of winter breath,
grits the eyes, clogs the nose,
steals the moisture from our throats—
shopkeepers, housewives, temple monks
all wielding brooms, sweep,
sweep the desert dust away
as if it were pernicious, a message from the desert
that all that lives
must go the dusty way.
But then the falling desert seeds the clouds—
pregnant on the wind, each grain of dust
an embryonic water drop,
then rain—
the roaring rain!
The winter desert falls in rain,
washing over everything.
Gobi’s dustfall quenches us.
© Gene van Troyer
