An Invitation

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

We welcome Rebecca Lu Kiernan back to our poetry pages in this issue with “Please Excuse My Absence From Myself.”

Rebecca also invites everyone to take part in her “eternal poem” on her website. It’s all in good fun: a kind of floating, mass-participation poem made up of striking lines contributed by readers.

Please write me several lines from which I can choose something for the next line of my Endless Poem Project. Read the piece and contribute something. Come on, it would be a hoot. No one has to know it's you. Give me a few lines to choose from. Do not be afraid. It is anonymous. www.whattodowhenhellbreaksloose.blogspot.com

Rebecca also says some very kind words about Bewildering Stories:

I wish to extend a special invitation to the readers of Bewildering Stories. This magazine takes risks, and publishes speculative fiction, which editor Don Webb says "leaves the door wide open."

Don Webb is one of my favorites. He has published a large body of my work and interviewed me recently for his magazine. I had not done an interview in ten years because I came out looking like such an ass in the last one. Thanks, Don, for being gentle.

For the record, while Don says he leaves the door wide open, he has closed it on my fingers a few times. Faced with the question of whether or not to run my series, "1001 Men I'd Like to Ravish," he said it was a good way to have us both arrested. Don is a delight, a breath of fresh air. Check out out this clever, unpredictable magazine at www.bewilderingstories.com

Blushing Bewilderedly, I hasten to return the compliment, Rebecca, and add that you’ve made Bewildering Stories something of an impromptu fan club over the years.

As for our getting arrested for the “1001 Men I’d Like to Ravish,” I was quoting one of our Classic Rejection Notices, which a publisher wrote to Wm. Faulkner for his novel Sanctuary.

You see, I’m under orders not to print material from which parents might have to shield the eyes of children in middle school. Of course, I expect the children could explain it better to the parents than the parents could explain it to the children, but you understand, I’m sure... And I’ve never forgotten an X-rated poem of yours that is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.

Keep up the good work! And let’s everybody send Rebecca sizzlingly catchy lines of poetry at her blog.

Don