by F. J. Bergmann
The wrong side of the door is your side, obviously. The wrong side of the paper is whichever you choose to write on. Don’t interpret this as criticism or pessimism. Wrong is good. It would be a problem if you were on the same side as everybody else, or on the side they thought you should be on. It would probably be pretty crowded. If you know you’re wrong you don’t have to worry about what’s right. You can rest easy, except for watching out in case they change the wrong side and make it right. Because once you get on the right side of the door, you can’t get back to the wrong side any more, no matter how hard you pound or how loud you scream, and anyway, on the right side of the door they don’t allow that sort of thing.
the light
on the other side
is never the same
F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com), and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. She has competed at the National Poetry Slam as a member of the Madison, WI, Urban Spoken Word team. Her work appears irregularly in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov’s SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. A Catalogue of the Further Suns won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest and the 2018 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award.
Portage Magazine 