M.C. Childs
Entreaty to the Thunderous (Hexagram 51)
Custodians of raw sonance,
Silver shaman of white starfire,
We are heavy in our earth.
We are rich in the mire.
Let us be thunderous.
Recruit us to the constellations.
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M.C. Childs’ poems have been selected by Asimov’s, Leading Edge, Locus, The Martian Wave, Scifaikuest and Space & Time. He is also the author of “Composing Speculative Cities” (Analog, April 2016) and “Learning from New Millennium Science Fiction Cities” (Journal of Urbanism, March 2015). His award-winning books include The Zeon Files: Art and Design of Historic Route 66 Signs (UNM Press 2016), Urban Composition (Princeton Architectural Press ,2012) and Squares: A Public Space Design Guide (UNM Press 2004). He is an Associate Dean of Architecture at the University of New Mexico, and was on the M.I.T. tiddlywinks team.
Editor’s Notes on “Entreaty to the Thunderous (Hexagram 51)”: This innovative poem is modeled after a hexagram, first written in The I Ching book. The book consists of 64 hexagrams and each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines. Each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line) or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). Each hexagram is accompanied with a description, often cryptic, akin to parables. Each line in every hexagram is also given a similar description. The German mathematician philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, took great interest in this construction.
