You’d be forgiven for thinking I title half my poems in Latin, given “Damnatio Memoriae” and now “Draco Urbis,” which I have just sold to Julia Rios at Worlds of Possibility. I swear, it isn’t true! Okay, yes, I do have two other unsold poems with Latin titles, but I’ve also got more than two dozen that aren’t of that type.

Anyway, this one was a long time coming — at least eighteen years, maybe more, since I don’t remember when I first came up with the idea; that’s just when I created the file that was my abortive attempt to write the concept as a short story before running aground on my lack of plot. And then I also wrote a version of this in a different poetic form, a tanka instead of the mirror cinquain version that’s the one I’ve sold. But I’m very pleased with the result, and I’m looking forward to seeing it published!