T.D. Walker

1. Are There Any Long-term Effects of Ionospheric Heating?

​
“A good analogy to this process is dropping a stone in a fast-moving stream. The ripples
caused by the stone are quickly lost in the rapidly moving water and are completely
undetectable a little farther downstream.” -- from the University of Alaska Fairbanks
HAARP¹ FAQ

--or, instead, say the sea, say baroque rock dropped astern.
Say consider the hull of a cruise ship, consider the tension

water maintains as its surface. And then consider
breaching that surface, consider falling through water,

consider movements of fins in water, fins in vocal folds.
And consider the algae, the fish, the whales among the shoals,

stone-wavelets’ undulations faint against receptive skins.
Consider the eyes, convergently evolved therein--

Say the sea. Say baroque. Say what can be seen,
received. Say tentacles of giant squid, say manatees,

say giant oarfish, say giant Pacific octopus. Consider
failure to capture the wholeness of a being. Say sea-quaffed limb,

say how the stone falls toward the sediment-edged dim-
ness of things. Consider how I too am made monster--

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1. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program studies the ionosphere by heating it with high-frequency radio
waves. Originally a project funded by the US military, HAARP is now maintained by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

HAARP has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, including those that accuse HAARP’s researchers of controlling
the weather for malicious purposes.

The FAQ from which the title and quote have been taken can be found here:
https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/faq

8. Can HAARP Be Used To Generate VLF or ELF, that is Very Low Frequency or Extremely Low Frequency Signals?


​​“However, the HAARP facility does not directly transmit signals in the VLF/ELF
frequency range. Instead, VLF/ELF signals are generated in the ionosphere at an altitude
of around 100 km (more than 62 miles). Frequencies ranging from below 1 Hz to about
20 kHz can be generated through this ionospheric interaction process.” -- from the
University of Alaska Fairbanks HAARP FAQ

“The youngest stude upon a stane, / The eldest came and pushed her in.” -- from the folk
song, “The Twa Sisters²”

Consider, too, how I was made monster.
Once (again), you say: drowned woman. A river

arced her body, crest and trough, until the miller plied
her sinuous: sternum-violined, distal phalanges aligned

pin precise. No mermaid, no story of a mermaid’s
siren voice. Not that. Never that. Let’s call it a whale’s, then. Flayed

open to reveal what bodies always reveal. What the fiddle sings
harrowing through some low signal sent to submarines--

If I too am playing to a court, consider
which among you is my beloved, which my sister.

Consider who (you think) threw me in and who rends
strings that were never veins. If my voice’s low ghosts

shudder meaning into the resonance of your bones,
consider what it is to be an instrument--


​

----
1. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program studies the ionosphere by heating it with
high-frequency radio waves. Originally a project funded by the US military, HAARP is now
maintained by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

HAARP has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, including those that accuse HAARP's
researchers of controlling the weather for malicious purposes.
The FAQ from which the title and quote have been taken can be found here:
https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/faq

2. "The Twa Sisters" is a British folk song that tells to story of two sisters. The eldest's fiance loves the
youngest sister better, so the eldest pushes her into the river. A miller finds her body and makes,
alternately, a harp or a fiddle. The miller brings the instrument to court and plays for the sisters'
family. The harp/fiddle sings reveals the eldest sister's crime

--
T.D. Walker is the author of the poetry collections Small Waiting Objects (CW Books, 2019) and Maps of a Hollowed World (Another New Calligraphy 2020). Her poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Web Conjunctions, The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. Walker curates and hosts Short Waves / Short Poems, a program created for broadcast on shortwave radio that features poets reading their work. Find out more at https://www.tdwalker.net