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42.1 Winter 2019 $5.00
Night Stop by Robert Frazier Table of Contents
05 Dragons & Rayguns • Vince Gotera 07 SFPA Announcements 15 President’s Message • Bryan Thao Worra 19 From the Small Press • Rebecca Buchanan, Herb Kauderer, Diane Severson Mori, Lisa Timpf 27 Stealth SF: Where Shall I Pour My Dream? • Denise Dumars 42 XenoPoetry: Untitled • Shiyi Li (Translated by D. A. Xiaolin Spires) Poetry 04 New Year’s Resolutions • Mary Soon Lee • [thought we’d found] • Lauren McBride 05 [time machine testing begins] • Lauren McBride • A Deity Goes Too Far • David C. Kopaska-Merkel • epilogue • Brittany Hause 06 Mothra • Robert Borski • The Fairy T.A.Z. •Lorraine Schein 08 Titanium Sheen • Russell Hemmell • The Day the Dragons Returned • Jacqueline West 09 On a Dead Spaceship • Robin Helweg-Larsen 10 White Silk-Lined Casket • Jessica Drake-Thomas •Not Tonight • Kathleen A. Lawrence 11 Life on Uranus • Christina Sng • Does it have cup holders? • Gretchen Tessmer 12 NonLinear B • Denise Dumars and s. c. virtes • [happy ending—] • Carolyn M. Hinderliter • [new baby robot] • Denny E. Marshall 13 Rocket Autumn • Aaron Knuckey • Space Junked (LA Ramjet) • Benjamin Whitney Norris • [last supper] • Greg Schwartz • [eternal life . . .] • Greg Schwartz TM 14 The Cook •P M F Johnson • Pregnant • David Barber 15 [after hypnotherapy] •Christina Sng • Styx and Bones • Gretchen Tessmer 16 Giants in the Earth • Deborah L. Davitt • [“Eject” button] • Noel Sloboda • [Oort cloud slam] • LeRoy Gorman 17 Overodd (Er)go Self-Installation • J. P. Brown • [pets] • Christina Sng • [her gentle kisses] • ayaz daryl nielsen • Property of Hansel and Gretel • Matthew Wilson 18 In the Vast Underground Cities of Mars • Mary Jo Rabe • [For her who laid and hatched my egg] • Ronald A. Busse 24 [“hey!] • ayaz daryl nielsen • [even as queen] • Christina Sng 25 Unicorn Care • Mary Soon Lee • Paleopoets Speak • Mickey Kulp • [lingerie fetish] • F. J. Bergmann
Star*Line 2 Winter 2019 26 Blocked • Robert Borski • [burying the alien] • Christina Sng • [like the moon] • F. J. Bergmann 30 cyborg teambuilding • F. J. Bergmann • [winter chill] • LeRoy Gorman 31 The Farm •Josh Brown • a nano message • D. A. Xiaolin Spires • [fossil star in shale] • F. J. Bergmann • [dawn chill on Enceladus] • F. J. Bergmann • [crumpled behemoth] • Marcus Vance 32 Willowisp • Lynne Sargent • [protected old growth] • LeRoy Gorman • Drunk on Spring • Symantha Reagor • [Earth a blue speck] • F. J. Bergmann 33 the way home • Michelle Muenzler • loose change • Allan Rozinski • My Fault • David C. Kopaska-Merkel • [lost twin] • Christina Sng 34 Organic Traffic Cornelius• Fortune 35 [the feeling] • Christina Sng • What You Hear When Your Best Friend Falls for a Supervillain • Beth Cato • In Situ • Charlotte Ozment 36 Esmeralda • Marge Simon • heavy-planet dreams • Peter Roberts 37 Amphitrite • Cassandra Rose Clarke • [odor of lilies] • Alzo David-West • The Mantids’ Moirai • Mindy Watson 38 The Child •David Barber • [immortality] • Christina Sng • [By sheer coincidence] • Jeffrey Park • [second opinion] • Carolyn M. Hinderliter 39 It Is Said • Lisa Timpf • [time machine] • Denny E. Marshall • Balancing Act • D. A. Xiaolin Spires, Deborah L. Davitt, and Gretchen Tessmer 40 Self-Portrait as Pretty Monster • Jeannine Hall Gailey 41 Why You Should Buy Your Loved One a Final Resting Place on Sepulcrum Minor • Juleigh Howard-Hobson • Quantum Hearts • Stace Johnson 43 Snubbed • Mary Soon Lee • [bustling city] • Marcus Vance • Paprika Dust • D. A. Xiaolin Spires • [cinnamon tentacles, cardamom suckers] • D. A. Xiaolin Spires Back Noble Cinquains • John Caulkins Art Cover Night Stop • Robert Frazier 04 Lies the Tree Told • Christina Sng 11 Worlds Collide • Christina Sng 34 Stroller • Denny E. Marshall 36 Esmeralda • Marge Simon
Star*Line 3 Winter 2019 New Year’s Resolutions thought we’d found a suitable New Earth 1. For novices coffee plants won't grow colonization efforts Huddle in the Antarctic dark abandoned with emperor penguins for sixty-four days. —Lauren McBride
Irrigate Mars (canals preferred).
Memorize the first ten thousand primes.
•
2. For journeymen
Endow peahens with plumage eclipsing that of peacocks.
Circumnavigate the Moon by hot-air balloon (add appropriate atmosphere in advance).
Prove the Riemann hypothesis.
•
3. For advanced practitioners
Travel to 17th-century Mauritius to retrieve dodos.
Rearrange the rings of Saturn.
Make π rational.
—Mary Soon Lee
Lies the Tree Told by Christina Sng
Star*Line 4 Winter 2019 Dragons & Rayguns
Happy New Earth-Orbit, Terrans and other sentient beings, terrestrial and extraterrestrial! As always, we offer you the proverbial veritable feast of speculative poetry, reviews, articles, art, and news. Again in this issue, as we had throughout the 2018 volume year, the SFPA’s 40th anniversary celebration year, we have cover art created by a poet: Robert Frazier, SFPA Grandmaster and former editor of this magazine. I hope you enjoy this issue, dear friends in specpo, and I wish you all—bilateral and asymmetrical—the best poetry year ever!
—Vince Gotera, Star*Line Editor
A Deity Goes Too Far time machine testing begins People just didn’t get the hint, auto return enabled Yahweh wasn’t getting thru, time machine testing begins 12 not enough? The 13th plague, —Lauren McBride Dwarf hippopotami, would do the trick. No? How about No. 14: Mixed velociraptors and tyrannosaurs? (If the right one don’t get you epilogue The left one will) If the survivors STILL won’t how the whole hill shakes Obey the commandments, to the thrum Another flood, of chitinous wings . . . But this time from below: if you were with me now Molten rock, 1000 °C. I’d dance along How does it feel? Feeling the love and obedience yet? —Brittany Hause Hello? Hello?
—David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Star*Line 5 Winter 2019 Mothra
At a cost of several billion dollars, and conceived as the ultimate bioweapon, able, like Lorenz’s butterfly, to fan up enormous hurricane winds,
but released under cover of darkness from its aircraft-hangered chrysalis (within the silver threads of which germline edits have reworked its trachea and exoskeleton),
then directed via alarm pheromones to attack our hostile foe, only to see it err off-course, taking a skyward route, winging its way toward the rising bulb of the full moon.
Perhaps, after all, we should have gone with the giant fire-breathing lizard prototype.
—Robert Borski
The Fairy T.A.Z.
The nihilist Unseelie fairies live in a Trans-Temporal Autonomous Zone. It’s a pop-up rave, held outside of space-time, a party that bubbles up between midnight and eternity—a never-ending revel, outrunning the dawn. Indolent aristocrats, they fornicate with each other and their change- lings in every position, drink the greenest absinthe and then hallucinate us. We sometimes hear them carousing, though we are but their dreams. The Unseelie light bonfires that burn so brightly they incinerate the edges of reality, creating sparks of anomalous experiences, déjà vu moments, and fugue states. They party so hard, they create more of the dark energy of the universe, an ebony tidal wave accelerating the collapse of the cosmos. As the last atoms rip apart, the Unseelie celebrate the Void.
—Lorraine Schein
Star*Line 6 Winter 2019 SFPA Announcements SFPA Treasurer Election Voting is open January 15–March 15 for SFPA Treasurer. The only candidate is Rich Magahiz; members may write in other names. Rich tells us, “After a long while in the Midwest and East I am living back on the West Coast getting used to the new millennium. I have been writing speculative poetry for about twenty years now, mostly minimalistic, and have enjoyed a few publications.” Members may vote at http://bit.ly/SFPATreasurer2019 or by mail to the SFPA secretary: Renee Ya, P.O. Box 2074, San Mateo, CA 94401 USA. Rhysling Award Nominations David C. Kopaska-Merkel, the 2019 Rhysling Awards Chair, edited Star*Line in the late ’90s and later served as SFPA President. His 29th book, a speculative-poetry collection entitled Metastable Systems, was nominated for the Elgin award. Kopaska-Merkel edits and publishes Dreams and Nightmares, a genre poetry zine in its 33rd year of publication. In 2017 he was named Grandmaster of the SFPA. Nominations are open until February 15 for the Rhysling Awards for the best poems published in 2018. Only SFPA members may nominate one short poem and/or one long poem for the award. Poets may not nominate their own work. All genres of speculative poetry are eligible. Short poems must be under 50 lines (no more than 500 words for prose poems) and Long poems are 50+ lines, not including title or stanza breaks, and first published in 2018; include publication and issue, or press if from a book or anthology. Here is the online nomination form: http://bit.ly/2019RhyslingNom. Or nominate by mail to the SFPA secretary: Renee Ya, P.O. Box 2074, San Mateo, CA 94401 USA. Elgin Award Nominations Charles Christian will be the 2019 Elgin Awards Chair. Nominations due on May 15; more info will come by MailChimp email soon. Send title, author, and publisher of speculative poetry books and chapbooks published in 2017 and 2018 to [email protected] by mail to the SFPA secretary: Renee Ya, P.O. Box 2074, San Mateo, CA 94401 USA. Only SFPA members may nominate; there is no limit to how many they can nominate, but they may not nominate their own work. Books and chapbooks that placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, in last year’s Elgin Awards are not eligible.
Star*Line 7 Winter 2019 Titanium Sheen
In the lucid reflection of titanium, her cyborg identity. Her exoskeleton, like a beetle’s carapace or a knight’s armour. She is made for war and all mankind’s harrowing dreams, one among a thousand dark sisters of no-name. On her left shoulder, precious and delicate, the graft of her dead lover’s skin.
—Russell Hemmell
The Day the Dragons Returned
On the day the dragons returned, Tina Miller had an argument with her daughter. It started with something slight and silly, a tea set given away when the girl was small, and grew from white lies to tricks and deprivations, a tallying of years-old flaws. Tina stood at her kitchen window, phone clenched in an angry hand, eyes narrowed on a patch of weeds as the small horde soared overhead, gold tails whisking the blue-white sky.
On the day the dragons returned, Paul Harding dropped his coupons in the market parking lot. They sprinkled the pavement like dead white seeds, fluttering over the cart return where Stephen Lee swore at a stuck wheel, onto the sidewalk where Kate Bergquist bent to fix a shoe. In the park across the street, a tribe of kids fought over the rules of baseball, and Marina Mangal, age eight, searched for four-leaf clovers and found none.
No one looked up.
On the day the dragons returned, the clouds changed color, fiery breath melting their whiteness to sprays of pink, gold, green. Wings wide as pirate sails sliced the air, beats ripping the wind, powerful enough
Star*Line 8 Winter 2019 to make the distant ground shake. Of course, nobody could hear this over the noise of jackhammers and skid steers. Crews were repairing Maple and Third, felling the centurion oaks whose roots could break stone.
If the dragons had returned sometime earlier, before the eight o’clock rush, or later, after school and work and appointments were done, maybe the town would have spotted something: the glint of sun or starlight on metallic scales, black silhouettes swimming in an indigo sky. But the world has ways of keeping eyes on the ground. Jack Parker lost a tooth on a T-ball field. Hector Reya was buried. Violet Fox found a dime. Only the Davises’ dog went still, its twitching nose catching something wondrous on the wind that brushed over the town and then was gone.
—Jacqueline West
On a Dead Spaceship
On a dead spaceship drifting round a star The trapped inhabitants are born and die. The engineers’ broad privileges lie In engine room and solar panel power.
The fruit and vegetables and protein coops Are run by farmers with genetics skills: The products of their dirt and careful kills Help service trade between the several groups.
Others—musicians, architects—can skip Along the paths of interlinking webs. Beyond these gated pods that the rich carve For their own selves (but still within the ship), In useless parts, are born the lackluck plebs. Heard but ignored, they just hunt rats or starve.
—Robin Helweg-Larsen
Star*Line 9 Winter 2019 White Silk-Lined Casket
Dirt rained down on the lid, cool black beads are drumming like slipping between your fingers an afternoon rain, and the prayers a steady tap your silent lips form of fingers, are only for you. slowly subsiding in their urgency. —Jessica Drake-Thomas
I don’t know who dug this grave. It must have been me. My hands are mud-caked Not Tonight as I clasp them over my chest. I’m alone now Oh, darling, you tease with the one thing in wispy tears of gauze, I had feared: silence. ivory cheesecloth floating, rustling specter in silk, When you left, crinoline, sheerest satin, you did not wrap revealing your lovely lean a red string silhouette of ectoplasm. around my finger. Won’t you, my sweet, Now, save the soft calling there is through the dark wind no bell to tell for another starlit night, those at the surface close my window sash, that I’m down here and and just let me sleep? still breathing. I’m too tired tonight. Perhaps, next new moon. This wasn’t how I wanted to go out— —Kathleen A. Lawrence no roaring funeral fire, juniper branches catching, my skin popping and burning like stars.
Instead, my hands brush against this soft fabric. This lush, cold darkness.
I curl up into myself because I know right now,
Star*Line 10 Winter 2019 Life on Uranus Does it have cup holders?
In the depths of Uranian sea, used spaceship salesman Tardigrades feed on the plankton typical blowhard Trawling the bottom. greasy, loud silicone hair To them, gelled straight back: Time is indeterminate. They exist in peace. “certified pre-owned by one little ol’ alien Till the day who never A stream of asteroids side-swiped a meteor Slams into their planet, or ran into space trash” Sweeping them all up Into the frost zone, true, true Where they freeze instantly (well, let’s pretend that’s true)
Before the shockwave but hey, better questions— Jettisons them into the void did she smoke? Where they quietly sleep, and/or does it have cup holders? In stasis, As gravity from each planet —Gretchen Tessmer Propels them toward the Sun.
Desiccated and adrift, The tardigrades are swept Into a blue-green planet,
Warm as their world, Awakening after eons Of hibernation
In a strange new home Where they thrive As they always will.
—Christina Sng
Worlds Collide by Christina Sng
Star*Line 11 Winter 2019 NonLinear B happy ending— sitting at home ECTO- on her bearskin rug as in -plasm Goldilocks VI- laughs as in -able —Carolyn M. Hinderliter [[[The software sees words, is inches from seeing our grand Pattern]:
CON- as in -tagion new baby robot REV- change the oil and oil filter as in -olution again and again
[the Eye sees the —Denny E. Marshall winding Path,]]]: disembodied
silver wires dance toward human brains neatly folded,
nota bene:
EN- as in -coded D- N- A- as in RecombinAnt
all is
[[[LOST]]]: as in TRANS LATION.
—Denise Dumars and s. c. virtes
Star*Line 12 Winter 2019 Rocket Autumn
Inspired by Ray Bradbury’s “Rocket Summer”
In the ruins of Silverton the Heroes have fled, Though their witchfinger gantries still claw at jaundiced stars Like misers hoarding over their hidden amber jewels. Summer’s gone, too, with its fairy heat and cheering crowds. The storefronts on Main Street slough old bunting like dead skin. “Hello from Mars!” postcards ramble like Russian thistle; American Apollos soar on yellowed newsprint.
“It’s too late for Mars, but maybe not for Heaven,” The preacher proclaims behind his patriot’s pulpit, But Silverton’s stragglers just don’t buy it. They’re broke, Scared, dwelling in Nod—the wrong side of the flaming sword.
Rough magic is required. The sky must reopen.
Launch pads are ringed with runes, sheep tallow candles, The scarecrow masses: ghosts bound in chambray and denim. They part like riverreeds to let their sacrifice approach. Her wide eyes are painted red by starlight—an omen. A countdown begins as the helmeted maiden is bound And the dagger (a heat shield shard) is held to her heart. At “Zero!” the blade arcs and descends; “Lift off!” is screamed, But nothing happens, at least in the empty heavens.
The spell is broken and the bloodcursed crowd is riven. They slink back to Protestant prayers and rusted hovels.
—Aaron Knuckey last supper the parishioners dine on their pastor Space Junked (LA Ramjet) —Greg Schwartz his getaway car no lowrider reaching eternal life . . . orbital velocity a halo of flies stalls in a vacuum above the preacher’s head
—Benjamin Whitney Norris —Greg Schwartz
Star*Line 13 Winter 2019 The Cook
I grease his sundered limbs with butter pats infused with thistle, dock, some bark of yew, then toss his offal in his own soup vat. Because these humans think themselves the true intelligentsia, their brains are swelled and best discarded (wouldn’t want to learn “we’re what we eat” affects us trolls as well!) then roast the rest. For piety, I burn the bones—they also make good stock—once done with gnawing them. Still, I sometimes wonder if the deeds we do may haunt, despite the fun. Do humans throng the afterlife, their grief a hunger for revenge? I turn the roast, decide, oh well, that’s fine. I like poached ghost.
—P M F Johnson
Pregnant™
Oh, you know, swollen ankles, backache, heartburn. Some would offer payment for such conversations, and each stretched belly was worth a photograph.
It seems their world forgot its flesh beginnings, just renewed themselves instead, complete and adult, by some trick of the science we envy so much.
Eating its way out, they thought at first, deceived by the screaming and the blood; and the thing itself, demanding still more from its exhausted host.
Not a host, we said, a mother. And her baby. You could see them savouring the words like fine wine. Then asking if it was like this every time.
These days we charge top dollar to watch deliveries with no pain relief. Note our special rates for breech births, also C-sections for the connoisseur.
—David Barber
Star*Line 14 Winter 2019 President’s Message Happy New Year! With the start of a new year we reflect and look ahead, taking stock of what matters to us, what inspires us and what fills us with passion for the arts, particularly for speculative poetry. We saw a global growth and push to bring forward more poetry inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other imaginative genres, and the SFPA thanks everyone who has been a part of this vital and necessary movement as we marked our 40th Anniversary. Meeting with so many of you makes it’s clear there is a need now, more than ever, for poetry that pushes the outer boundaries of what’s possible. Some of us are newcomers to the field; others have been writing speculative poetry well before the SFPA was even a notion. But the joy of the community that we’ve built together as readers, writers, editors, publishers, bookstores, and more has endured across the decades because of an abiding commitment to including so many diverse voices and perspectives. The year 2019 has been the setting for many dystopian films, including Blade Runner, Akira, Zardoz, and The Running Man. Some correctly predicted parts of the future with startling accuracy, and others were significantly off, particularly on matters of fashion. But our imagination dared us to risk. That remains a key challenge for all of us as poets and fellow readers: what are the poems you want us to have conversations with, both your own, and those of others? The SFPA thanks all of you who have continued to volunteer with us to organize and host readings, panels and convention tracks, and to celebrate the first Speculative Poetry Month in November. There’s so much more yet ahead, and we couldn’t do it without you!
—Bryan Thao Worra, SFPA President
after hypnotherapy Styx & Bones my abduction comes back to me fishing in the Styx the moon of Kepler-16b skull and rib bones snag easy still bright in my eyes sign says “no swimming”
—Christina Sng —Gretchen Tessmer
Star*Line 15 Winter 2019 Giants in the Earth
“There were giants in the earth in those days—” Pish, there’ve always been giants around! It’s just that we tune them out, pretend that we can’t see them.
I mean, if Paul Bunyan was so big that he tripped and his hands formed “Eject” button the Finger Lakes? You know what they too close to radio knobs say about big hands and big feet. in my lost starship
If everything’s in proportion, —Noel Sloboda why, he’d have to bend his wife over a mountain range to hit her G-spot, and his morning wood might be a sequoia.
And if he’s got her sunnyside up? Well, you know how the Grand Tetons got their name. Where’s her clitoris? Oort cloud slam I’m sure he’s asked that, too. poets chill with rime Turns out he found it, but only when they honeymooned the next planet over, —LeRoy Gorman and screwed among the Mons Veneris— I hear she gushed lava for a week.
That’s why we do it! Who’d want to see them going at it? It’s not as if they can actually get a room; there’s none big enough! So instead we politely pretend not to notice what’s going on as a geyser explodes in front of us, ignore the shaking of the earth from the roll and sway of their hips, and they pretend not to be bothered by the pictures we take of them in flagrante delicto— Still we never get everything in frame at once; so it’s not porn, but art.
—Deborah L. Davitt
Star*Line 16 Winter 2019 Overodd (Er)go Self-Installation
I’ve dictated myself to bits since vital (signs) lost to …
These chrome hands lay@ edge-vision grasped only @ wind fade-voice (proto)type me fallen from gray(s) (anti)matter ≈ ideatum now, I’m only thinking … there4 I’m! still life in ram! kinesthetic void diminishing returns-in-law
ERR;OR #360 errant ego (I)deal eremite I’m 1 even(t) so far coded &0, odds (are), as if I (s)care easily
But I(t) ain’t what they worried: a period @ the end of a sent(i)ence you read. Nope. Digitization = liberation from mortal moil: pure all-go rhythm—toggle; digits shape dissshaped soil. I’m electron-flow conscious(ness), dangling @ the end of: a power cable is my new leash/e on live.
—J. P. Brow n
pets on the International Space Station all digital
—Christina Sng
Property of Hansel and Gretel her gentle kisses Oven for sale envious mumblings from One previous owner my other head May contain some ashes.
—ayaz daryl nielsen —Matthew Wilson
Star*Line 17 Winter 2019 In the Vast Underground Cities of Mars
Replicators, thought transmitters, healing tricorders, Double-helix holograms of hieroglyphic, alien mathematics, Floating maps of wormholes to all segments of the expanding universe, Time-travel elevators, FTL one-creature rocket ships, Simultaneous translators for living and mechanical languages, Musical neuro-broadcasters, Swaying red-sandstone sculptures and Shape-shifting paintings of ancient Martian seas and shores All wait.
The sealed doors to these left-over toys Won’t respond to Mechanical visitors, roaming robots, or rovers. They won't answer electromagnetic beams from above or beyond. Their computational devices, programmed to reinvent themselves At regular intervals, Are only allowed to welcome living creatures And have their own, alien, Turing tests for recognition purposes. They wait.
Fleeting visitors from far away and long ago Left these gifts for those willing to set forth and Carve out a home on an initially hostile planet, A requirement for any species Hoping to add its voice to the fractally diverging And enthusiastically cacophonous music of the stars, Where welcoming beings wonder How long they must wait.
—Mary Jo Rabe
For her who laid and hatched my egg, nursed my broken tentacle, and hovered close at my capsule-side when my fever skyrocketed to 52.3.
For him who played games with me, like Planetary Pursuit, taught me how to pilot our spaceship and zap invaders attempting to penetrate our planet’s force field.
Out of love and appreciation, I gobbled them down, each in one gulp.
—Ronald A. Busse
Star*Line 18 Winter 2019 From the Small Press Eurydice Sings by Sandi Leibowitz, Flutter Press, 2018, 45p, paper $8.00.
An old woman tests her granddaughter’s readiness to take up the crimson hood. A witch warns away the mice who greedily nibble, nibble, nibble at her cottage of sweets. A princess on the run dons a cloak of furs, and takes comfort in the voices of the animals slaughtered to create it. A princess locked in a casket and thrown into the sea patiently awaits the salvation offered by prophecy. A Goddess laments the loss of her love, who set aside his garden for a throne. In Eurydice Sings, Leibowitz collects twenty-two of her fairy tale– and mythology-inspired poems, including the previously unpublished “A Woman Made of Scarves” and “Snow Bride.” Ranging broadly through European lore (with two pieces based on Mesopotamian and Japanese sources), the poems revisit both well-known and little-known stories and characters. “Crimson-Hooded” draws upon Red Riding Hood, while “Danaë at Sea” focuses on the mother of the Greek hero, Perseus. “Freyja in Falcon-Skin” draws upon Norse mythology, while “The Kitsune Goes Pub-Crawling” features the famous fox spirit on the hunt for a new tail. A widely published speculative poet, Leibowitz is skilled at taking familiar stories and pulling out unexpected elements or points of view, particularly in regards to the experiences and voices of women. Leibowitz delves deep into the original stories, dragging hidden horrors, unexpected connections, and unconscious prejudices into the open. In the title poem, for example, Eurydice celebrates when she is finally able to defeat Orpheus in a contest of music—even if that means returning to the underworld. In “Sleeping, I Was Beauty,” the narrator laments: “I try unsnarling the skein of words / one hundred years of sleep have knotted up. / But my husband’s lips twist in distaste. / He squints each time I speak, / trying to imagine her back, / that sleeping girl he loves, / the mute.” In “Sea-Silk,” a woman skilled in weaving and song must wait until her granddaughter is grown to pass on ancient traditions, for “her only child, a son, lacks / blood’s inheritance / or woman’s patience.” In “Brother and Sister,” a young woman contrasts her sibling’s transformation into a deer—and his apparent new freedom of movement—with her own desire to escape the constraints of childhood and become a woman in her own right. In “Mother Gothel Recovers,” the eponymous witch awakens to find that her forest tower has been overgrown by a city; casting aside
Star*Line 19 Winter 2019 her “dowdy dress” she steps forth as “the wilderness reclaimed, / deadwood re-greening.” Throughout the collection, Leibowitz’s use of color, texture, and sound is haunting and hypnotic. Her poems are filled with “cobalt- glass lamps,” hair as “brown as elm-bark” and “gold as clover honey,” “vermillion shimmering to turmeric,” and “the undergleam of deeps shaded / by coral forests / and the dreams of whales.” The result is a sumptuous feast for the imagination. Fairy tales and myths are not for children or the faint of heart. In Eurydice Sings, Leibowitz guides us across the threshold and into a realm of darkness, power, pain, and heart-aching beauty. Highly recommended.
—Rebecca Buchanan
Entanglement by David C. Kopaska-Merkel & Kendall Evans, Diminuendo Press, 2018, 55p. Introduction by Bryan Thao Worra. Paper $8.99.
Entanglement is a handsome slim trade paperback collection of poems by David C. Kopaska-Merkel (hereafter DKM) and Kendall Evans. There are 50 pages of poems including a few short ones, but most of the 27 poems are substantial.
Entanglement, quantum phenomena, or reference to particle physics implying such, are directly mentioned in more than a third of the poems. The macrocosmos and multiverse are mentioned in another third or so. Yet, for me, the book is about viewpoint and perspective. For example, the Rhysling-nominated “The Trajectory of Culture” (36) considers the plight of the Fomalhauts, which is a device for looking at human traditions, especially regarding mail, from a different perspective. I found it pretty damned funny, as I also found “The Bagel Shop Across the Street” (25). More examples of shifted viewpoints include “Virtual Love” which is a love letter from a virtual stalker with some lovely twists. In “Conestoga” while considering intelligent microbes, they write “Some ponds produce not oxygen, but poetry” (10). With thematic trends of entanglement, quanta, macroworlds, and alternate perspectives it would have been easy for the authors to depart from the personal, but they have not omitted it. The collection as a whole leans to the cosmic, but there are intimate personal moments such as “Warp Time” where the narrator finds “I’m suddenly as ancient & wrinkled/As Tiresias, as androgynous, / Weary beyond cognition” (23).
Star*Line 20 Winter 2019 “I, A.I. ” offers the view of early human/A.I. interaction from the viewpoint of the A.I. who concludes . . . the Turing line is a gradient No sharp division between thought and not Is there, so Ian and I metaphorically Dance blind-folded Arms flailing, somewhere in the mix— (6)
I was stuck with the lines “Maps of anywhere available everywhere / Not necessarily accurate, but extremely detailed” (21) as not only a description of cyberspace, but of speculative poetry’s presence there. The last stanza of the book was hugely powerful for me, and a perspective shift on the sense of wonder that I still adore in speculative writings. I won’t spoil it for you here. You can see for yourself if it hits you the same way.
—Herb Kauderer
Dark Matters: New Sci-Fi Poems by Russell Jones, Tapsalteerie, 2018, 28p, paper £5.00.
This is a short chapbook by well-known Scottish poet and editor Russell Jones. He has been published in Star*Line and John Johnson reviewed Jones’ chapbook Spaces of their Own. I reviewed the same chapbook and the anthology he edited, Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poetry from the UK. Most recently he has been deputy and poetry editor of the SF magazine Shoreline of Infinity, where I believe quite a few of our members have been published. A new anthology, Multiverse: An International Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, coedited by Jones and Rachel Plummer, includes many, many SFPA poets. Anyhoo, on to the chapbook at hand. Many of poems collected here (8 of 14) are previously unpublished. Only six were published singly in other publications, all in the UK, aside from Star*Line. There’s a wide variety of forms and styles here and a demonstrated adventurousness, playfulness and humor. One poem has been used in an anthology about poetry and comics: Over the Line: An Introduction to Poetry Comics (“Whatever Happened to the Blue Whale in 2302 AD”). My favorites in this chapbook (in order of appearance) begin with “Dark Horse,” about people transforming into a herd of horses
Star*Line 21 Winter 2019 at night. Jones really pulls us into the transformation so that you can feel it in your bones as you read. Also, the use of the double meaning here in the title is seen often in Jones’ poems; familiar phrases and idioms take on a different meaning in the context, which creates a layering or faceting effect. A found/erasure poem using only the famous quote “That’s one small step for (a) man . . .” moved me deeply. It is unquotable here, since much of its effect is in the format. “Dredd” is a “villain”-elle (pun courtesy of Russell Jones himself!), one of my favorite forms, and Jones uses it with great skill for maximum effect. There is a set of poems called “Pioneer,” which I don’t understand fully, but contains one of the funniest poems, “iii. Relative,” which is a space spoof on a GPS navigator speak when you’ve taken a wrong turn. This chapbook was a pleasure to read and reread. Highly recommended.
—Diane Severson Mori
I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust: A Collection of Fantastical Poems by Edward Willett, illustrations by Wendi Nordell, Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing, 2018, 126p. CAN$19.95.
Though published in 2018, Edward Willett’s poetry collectionI Tumble Through the Diamond Dust had its genesis in the spring of 2016. During poetry month (April) that year, Saskatchewan’s former Poet Laureate Gerald Hill threw out a challenge to members of the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild. The nature of the challenge: to create new work either inspired by, or incorporating, the first two lines taken from poems published by Saskatchewan poets. Two sets of assigned first lines were sent out to participants each business day during the month. Willett decided to play along, and the 21 poems contained in I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust are what he came up with. The space devoted to each poem contains three elements. First, there are the lines that inspired the piece, with the author, name of the original poem, and where it was published indicated. I thought it was a nice touch to devote page space for this information right near the poem, rather than burying this information at the back of the book. That being said, there is a more detailed bibliography at the back for those who might be inclined to seek out the original works. Second, each poem has a full-page black-and-white illustration drawn by Alberta artist Wendi Nordell. Finally, there is the poem
Star*Line 22 Winter 2019 penned by Willett. Like much of Willett’s prose work, the poems all take on a fantasy or science fiction bent, with some dipping toward mild horror. The works themselves evoke a variety of moods. Some are brooding and apocalyptic, while others are humorous or whimsical. Willett is better known for his prose than his poetry. Therefore, it’s not surprising that, inspired by the assigned two lines, he created, for the most part, poems that tell a story. Some of the poems are more “poetic” in nature than others. Some, like the title poem, “I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust,” contain metaphor and figurative language. Others use repetition as an element, while “The Tale of Old Bill from the Ship Cactus Hills” incorporates a rhyme scheme. However, I felt a number of the poems, with few changes other than removing the line breaks, could have been re-purposed as flash fiction. One of my favorite poems in the collection was “I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust”, particularly the section: I tumble through the diamond dust of my own frozen air, tombstones of ice for future days that I will never see, the glittering crystal snowflake wake of my last lonely flight (14)
I enjoyed the dreamy quality of the poem, although I felt the ending might have been stronger. “The Tale of Old Bill from the Ship Cactus Hills” is one of the few poems told in a rhyming style. Its rhythm reminded me of Robert W. Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” although it had less internal rhyme. The style did not come across as artificial, and the meter provided a nice pace to the poem. There were other parts of the book that stood out for me. For example, the following lines in the poem “Virtuality” evoked a certain moodiness that hit home: I never thought that I would come to this sad room, to this sad place, (18)
In “This is the Way the World Ends”, the second stanza begins: It Came from Outer Space rose from its grave in late-night TV hell, shambled, zombie-like, down every city street,
Star*Line 23 Winter 2019 rebooted, reimagined, restaged with all of us, mere players who strutted, fretted, bled and died, to the last syllable of recorded time (22)
“Saint Billy” and “Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God” were also enjoyable for their ironic humor. When I heard about the premise of the book, I was curious to see how the author would deal with the assigned two lines. Would they stick out like proverbial sore thumbs, or would they flow seamlessly into the poem? From my viewpoint, Willett did a good job of integrating the lines into the poems. In some cases, though not all, he achieved this by using one set of “first lines” as the first line of the poem he wrote. I also found it interesting to see where Willett’s imagination would take him with the assigned portions. In reviewing the poems, I can honestly say that Willett went places that would never occur to me. Included in Willett’s poems are a pair of snail siblings with a hate on for each other, rodeo cowboys, a woman with a werewolf husband and a vampire son, and sentient rocks. The situations Willett depicts are also interesting, and include extra years of life stored in a closet, a section of farmland excised from the Earth and turned into a living miniature, and a colony of aliens living near Revelstoke. Because of the prose-ish nature of many of the poems, I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust may be less appealing for poetry purists. However, the book is interesting in its own right for a number of reasons. It builds upon, and in a way helps to highlight, the works of other Canadian poets. It provides a living demonstration of how using other poets’ work as a springboard can end up taking us somewhere new and different. It includes illustrations as an added bonus. And, last but not least, it provides 21 small stories that transport us to strange places on, or off, the planet Earth.
—Lisa Timpf
“hey! even as queen stop still a sneaker kind of girl eating cinderella all our bait!” yelling as his friend —Christina Sng munches another human
—ayaz daryl nielsen
Star*Line 24 Winter 2019 Unicorn Care Paleopoets Speak
Reminder: healthy unicorns A million dinosaurs: should be left in the wild. we have samples of a few.
These guidelines apply only A million cavemen: to the infirm or injured. we barely know them.
Unicorns are not corrupt, But, but they are hazardous. a million poets? We’re all on Facebook Exposure may provoke idealism, an uncomfortable condition. leaving obscure fossils of hope and dread behind for Wear gloves when handling. Keep away from virgins. future paleopoetologists to ponder and debate, Old unicorns may wish to chat. Find time to listen to them. floating in the comfort of their moon cars. Groom daily, checking hooves. Horn may be rubbed with wax. Let me make it easy for you, future human. Wash once a week by starlight, declaiming the constellations. The consensus of us long-dead paleopoets Pasture should provide shade is this: and a source of running water. most of us despised Trump In winter, unicorns require and grain and extra birdsong. you better have floating moon cars, or why live Rehabilitated individuals in the future at all? must be released forthwith. —Mickey Kulp They will not return. They will not pine for you.
The grief and grace of this lingerie fetish will leave its mark. neighbor’s laundry hung to dry . . . these aren’t human shapes —Mary Soon Lee —F. J. Bergmann
Star*Line 25 Winter 2019 Blocked burying the alien beside my bodies Dear Wollstonecraft (Member #1797): vegetable patch We are sorry, but Member #1851 has filed a stalking and harassment —Christina Sng complaint against you.
Per contractual agreement, we must now ask you to refrain from any further contact with her, whether through the auspices of our website or otherwise. Your email and chat session privileges will certainly be suspended otherwise.
“Elsa Lancaster” will thus no longer be available for graveyard picnics, lightning-photographing sessions, or as arm candy at this year’s Mad Scientists Convention.
Also, while we’re discussing errant behavior, let us again remind you not to send any further candid selfies of your “Promethean baby-maker.” (Surely, given its pigmentation, a late addition to your post-revival phase, am I right?)
Agree to these terms and we here at I♥MONSTERS.com will be happy to continue to provide our specialty service to those of your much maligned, but no less worthy of love, kind.
Sincerely, MBS Director of Outreach Services like the moon you have a bright side —Robert Borski a dark side and another side you won’t show anyone
—F. J. Bergmann
Star*Line 26 Winter 2019 FINDING SPECULATIVEStealth POETRY IN NON-GENRESF MAGAZINES
Where Shall I Pour My Dream? Denise Dumars Our title comes this time from a line in a poem by a writer I just discovered—Lola Ridge. According to the Poetry Foundation, she was born Rose Emily Ridge in Dublin, Eire, in 1873. After her mother’s death, the 33-year-old divorcee who had been living in New Zealand moved to San Francisco and reinvented herself as poet and artist Lola Ridge. She was politically active, a socialist before it was considered kewl, and after moving to New York was arrested for protesting the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. She won lots of awards including the Guggenheim and was published in all the best journals. She died of tuberculosis at age 67. With major contributions to American poetry and a colorful political life, it is extraordinary that Lola is largely forgotten today, yet in that way she is like so many other women writing before the middle of the 20th century. Why didn’t I learn about her work in grad school? Her imagistic poetry feels very fresh and modern. We need to stop the erasure of pre-1950s women poets and give more unique writers like Ridge their due. So as I begin my essay on poetry and dreams I’ll quote from her poem, “The Dream”: But the day is an upturned cup, And its sun a junk of red iron Guttering in sluggish-green water. Where shall I pour my dream?
The dream that inspired me to find this issue’s subtitle was one of my own. I often dream of dystopian cities; probably my living in Bladerunner-era L.A. has something to do with it. But in my dream this time I was in San Francisco and met a man who was lamenting the burning of a bookstore! That makes it a nightmare. Now, we all know that there are far fewer bookstores in S.F. than there used to be due to gentrification. Independent bookstores close all the time now, as did The Pipe and Thimble located in Lomita, not far from where I live, and as of this writing in December 2018, one of our own most important L.A. area independent bookstores, Dark Delicacies in Burbank, is in danger of closing because their landlord wants to greatly increase the rent in order to lure “designer” stores to his building. So it’s no wonder I have nightmares. When I woke up from this one, I picked up the Fall 2018 issue of Star*Line and it opened to David
Star*Line 27 Winter 2019 Barber’s “Recent Excavations in Amerika” which suited my mood perfectly: This is where they lived, memories of their dwellings marked by baked brick in an outline of Euclid. Whether they were happy here we cannot say.
The burned-out bookstore in my dream was in a brick building in San Francisco, and I had not read Barber’s poem nor heard of S.F. poet Lola Ridge before my dream. I suppose that’s why dreams often seem so important to poets: not only are they an amazing repository of strange images and activities, but they also seem to be prescient in some ways at least some of the time. No doubt we will learn eventually that time is not what it seems—there are ideas on this that are far above my pay grade in quantum physics theories such as those of Dr. Joan Vaccaro. Regardless, the seeming time-and-space travel aspect of dreaming is a great boon to writers. Speaking of dreams, and speaking of preeminent American poetry vehicles, we come to a science fiction poem inThe New Yorker, James Richardson’s “For the Children.” This is full-on SF, not just something drawn from a pop culture reference like most poems in mainstream markets that reference SFnal tropes. Here’s a sample: They were unutterably lovely, the aliens, when finally we knew them, when at last we understood they had lived and moved among us from the beginning in bodies the image of ours, though smoother, eyes wider, as if the world were a little darker for them, or more wondrous, and we loved them as wildly and deeply and helplessly as our first loves, our dreams, our lost ones, all at once,
More preeminence submits itself in poetry in what my librarian friend Michael Toman used to call “George Plimpton’s fanzine,” The Paris Review. Speaking of time, I found in the Winter 2018 issue a reference to childhood and time in Emily Jungmin Yoon’s poem “Litany for the Green”: Was it because I was a child, who he assumed would enjoy sliding endlessly? And wasn’t he right? About how children conceive of time differently or that their imaginations work differently, and that every slide was, in fact, different?
Ah, we seem to be back to quantum mechanics here, methinks! Experimental form, ideas, and all manner of strange things would
Star*Line 28 Winter 2019 seem to suit this famous market, Luddite though it is in accepting only mailed-in submissions! Now another magazine that is high on our list of best places to get published—dare I say one of our dream markets—is, of course, Prairie Schooner (they also publish Emily Jungmin Yoon’s work) and their guidelines page is below. Their website is under construction as I write this so I don’t have a sample for you; you’ll just have to trust me on this or purchase a subscription. I’ve mentioned The Sun before, and although they prefer what they call “personal writing” they also admit that they don’t know what they’ll take until they see it, and they have published SFnal work before. This no-advertising magazine pays really well, and it’s a shame more people don’t know about it. Here’s a sample from “The God of Numbers,” by Danusha Lameris: I like to imagine a God who rises before dawn, takes out the stone tablets, and starts to tally the individual hairs on each head, the number of breaths we’ve taken in the night, who counts the cilia shooting our cells through the dark galaxies of our bodies just before he gets back to work
And while we’re on the subject of Poetry magazine, a search of the December 2018 issue finds several fantasy-based poems. I liked “The Jealous Minor Gods,” by Amy Beeder: I have hidden your lost teeth in the net of all my famous hair And with foresight promised your umbilicus
To several minor gods. I paid your fee in fawn skin & the lightest fringe of tissue, all the quiet noons assembled,
In yard stars & the light of phosphorescent pens, The dioramas that it takes to fill lacunae, in ancestral knots
So my advice this time is to do two things: First, to submit some of your best work to the high-status, high-paying markets I’ve talked about here, regardless of whether you’d consider it to be SF/F/H or whatever. Secondly, trust your dreams to provide you with images, content, and the emotional impact that poetry demands. Put them into your poetry, analyze their contents, find meaning that you can share and enlighten us with. Someday science might explain some of the more exceptional aspects of some dreams, but until then, let us appreciate them and the boon they bring to our creative writing.
Star*Line 29 Winter 2019 Works Cited
Barber, David. “Recent Excavations in Amerika,” Star*Line 41.4, Fall 2018, p. 18. Beeder, Amy. “The Jealous Minor Gods,”Poetry , Dec. 2018. https:// www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/148351/the- jealous-minor-gods Lameris, Danusha. “The God of Numbers,”The Sun, May 2013. https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/449/the-god-of-numbers “Lola Ridge,” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poets/lola-ridge Richardson, James. “For the Children,” The New Yorker, 19 Nov. 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/for-the- children Ridge, Lola. “The Dream,” Interesting Literature.https:// interestingliterature.com/2018/11/22/the-dream-a-poem-by-lola- ridge Vaccaro, Joan. “Quantum Theory of Time,” Institute for Quantum Computing, 16 Aug. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eXaBCNQMPsw
Markets
The New Yorker, https://newyorker.submittable.com/submit The Paris Review, https://www.theparisreview.org/about/submissions Poetry, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/submit
Prairie Schooner, https://prairieschooner.submittable.com/submit The Sun, https://thesunmagazine.org/submit
cyborg teambuilding winter chill lowest efficiency rating the cannibal warms gets cannibalized for parts leftovers
—F. J. Bergmann —LeRoy Gorman
Star*Line 30 Winter 2019 The Farm a nano message
Inside the barn be dragons wipers disengage upon a horde of golden hay hypnotic oscillations curled up and nestling eggs stop a trough of water to quench the fire. hydrophobic nanos regroup into The hen house holds no chickens a heart— but the griffins are home to roost a valentine message their talons grip and then let go from your drawing restless circles in the sky. self-driver
Huffs, whinnies, and neighs: —D. A. Xiaolin Spires the unicorns are restless again clopping hooves inside the stable sparkling horns and shimmering manes.
The milkhouse makes an interesting sight with miniature minotaurs milking manticores the milk is loaded then flown away with Pegasus leading the charge.
Over yonder in the clear-blue pond mermaids sing and swim and splash in a shimmering rainbow of sparkling light— the frog-prince sings to their beauty.
This season’s pixie harvest sees silos filled with glittery dust fluttering wings eager to produce more with the early morning chores. fossil star in shale its genus blue-shifted The harvest moon rises 450 million years with purple charming glow the misty dew draws magical —F. J. Bergmann among the wondrous crops.
—Josh Brown dawn chill on Enceladus crumpled behemoth base station at 85K ivy crawling over steel sunrise through the ice ring ancient war machine
—F. J. Bergmann —Marcus Vance
Star*Line 31 Winter 2019 Willowisp protected old growth the serial killer reminisces Lights float, disembodied: over stumps ghosts that have always lived on the other side of the glass. —LeRoy Gorman
We swim across distance— touching, to near, to far and it is as easy as waking, and it is as hard as falling asleep.
The twinkling in Morse tells me that cutting off a limb is sacrifice, that I watched you scream and burn and die but that is not what they will write on your epitaph, that is not what they will say when they light the candles, and so,
I must be mistaken, and have been led astray.
—Lynne Sargent Drunk on Spring
In dreams I trudge through languid shadows With forest mist waxing blue, And milky moonshine not revealing The frantic symphony Of ghostly beats pushing on my breast
Together with tongue and finger Earth a blue speck I soar delirious like reflected in liquid methane The goddess of wind thinking of home Drunk on spring
—F. J. Bergmann —Symantha Reagor
Star*Line 32 Winter 2019 the way home loose change she walks on west the out-of-shape though the signs say east shifty shapeshifter sleeps in sheds where the kudzu fooled no one creeps eats of the earth —Allan Rozinski black soil black loam with nothing but bones to remind her of home and though her flesh is strong her ribs remain cracked and the kudzu worms inward following the tracks carved out by her fists painting the dirt that black, black soil that black, black earth and when the road's run out and her feet are quit she lies in the kudzu for just a bit and dreams of a road not brimmed with bones of that black, black dirt and the smell of home My Fault
—Michelle Muenzler the life pod coasts softly there’s room for eight in here but the other seven are dead the only survivor, murderer me moving through darkness with the speed of forever
there might be enough protein lost twin to get me to port in stillbirth might be enough water all her life to keep me alive following her might be enough entertainment an extra shadow to keep me sane
—Christina Sng —David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Star*Line 33 Winter 2019 Organic Traffic when the world stopped we’ve become turning on its axis, organic traffic, pure distillation humanity responded migrant and unyielding in this way: while the earth rent itself apart, —Cornelius Fortune we felt an uncommon urge to step outside our cars during rush hour, so we abandoned our automobiles, leaving those hulking masses littered across the highway, idling in the warm sunlight the DNA locks inside us tumbled in a synchronous burst of new, raw energy, entropy awakened decoded, we learned to fly given invisible wings, we all soared up, up, and onward our bodies, self-contained spacesuits hardening against the evolutionary alteration, making us feel giddy, more than human intergalactic immigrants setting sail amongst the darkness of space hoping to touch heavenly thrones on our way to here or there to litter alien skies en masse, reaching out to grab comet tails and hurl them like cosmic javelins Stroller by Denny E. Marshall into an awaiting sun to touch the hem of a black hole before reversing gravity’s natural inclination, swallowing dark matter like a two-course appetizer tasting the remnants of digested planets, planetoid fragments, lost civilizations
Star*Line 34 Winter 2019 the feeling What You Hear When like time is standing still Your Best Friend Falls supermassive black hole for a Supervillain
—Christina Sng he’s delightfully maniacal not one of those villains who wants a high body count no, he is all about valiant causes he aims for structural destruction oh so careful about potential In Situ collateral damage
He chose this assignment, he’s always sweet to me volunteered willingly never keeps secrets to allow his anatomy he actually asks my feedback to become a symbiont, on his newest neurotoxins the carapace a construct he gets along with my parents envisioned through diagrams though, I admit, I haven’t found in the ruins on told them about his day job Titan’s shore. I just said he was a communications major in college He has evolved and been expelled far beyond I thought you were my friend our imaginations, now that you’d understand a warden of the skies, be happy for me with winged panels of why can’t you give him a chance? tattooed gossamer and he’s not a bad guy plaited geometry arcing when you get to know him from his once human visage to trail the stratosphere, —Beth Cato gathering corona winds to soar.
And from his etched and callused palms twin rondures descend, which he uses to chastise the rapacious earth-bound traders as well as deter any other-worldly organisms that attempt to usurp our place with Gaia.
—Charlotte Ozment
Star*Line 35 Winter 2019 Esmeralda
The sculptor was born twisted, a growth upon his back, but his eyes were bright, his arms strong from working stone, such magic in his hands!
As Michelangelo found scriptural figures hiding in Carrara marble, so he saw her form within a fallen asteroid.
When he was done, he named her Esmeralda, made her his gypsy queen— a legendary fantasy.
All the while he never knew that block of astral rock was transport for an alien seeking refuge on another world.
When at last, it was his time, Esmeralda shimmered—moved! At his bedside, she was there to guide him through his passing without cathedral bells or tears, brought to life again by love.
—Marge Simon heavy-planet dreams
butterfly-centipede flies like an eel: manifold legwings form ripples & waves —sequenced motions providing propulsion through soupy atmosphere.
—Peter Roberts
Star*Line 36 Winter 2019 Amphitrite
Diamonds plink against the glass, the start of a summer storm on a world where summer means nothing. In the beam of the emergency lights they transform into blood diamonds, drops of red flashing against an azure sky.
I give my warning as I was programmed. I inform him in my mechanized voice that he’s dying, that this was never a world for him. I don’t tell him that perhaps perhaps it will be a world for me, free of the confines of form, drifting disembodied through the poisonous air odor of lilies the blue gas clouds permeates the martian air, the storms of diamonds the wind blows gently
—Cassandra Rose Clarke —Alzo David-West
The Mantids’ Moirai (a triolet)
Six spindly legs will bear me down this silken thread That dangles from my ootheca. Chitin-bound, I’ll molt ten times, amassing strength with each new shed. Six spindly legs will bear me down this silken Thread The Fates must cut in just one year. To keep well-fed I’ll eat my mate, and when my abdomen swells round, Six spindly legs will bear nymphs down this silken thread That dangles from my ootheca, chitin-bound.
—Mindy Watson
Star*Line 37 Winter 2019 The Child immortality just one drop of blood The child has learned a lot of things. from the alien It knows about the food machines and how to trick them; it knows where —Christina Sng a tap drips water it can drink, and it learned early on about light and dark, and how friendly lights can hold their breath and slowly dim to warn the child that dark is close, so it knows the time to hurry to its hidey-hole. Dark is worst, when something might be creeping up. The child has learned to bite off screams.
The child also knows songs to sing to fill the hush, and though the words are mostly jumbled or forgot, the child still la-las through the days.
And then there is the place the child was told that it must never go, though it tiptoes in there sometimes, careful not to touch anything, just to look out where the dark lives, with the lights the grown-ups called stars, back then, before they all got sick and the child was left on its own.
—David Barber By sheer coincidence I actually met my brother from another planet.
Apparently Mother wasn’t too picky second opinion about where she laid her eggs. the android doctor hands her a tinfoil hat Or in whom.
—Carolyn M. Hinderliter —Jeffrey Park
Star*Line 38 Winter 2019 It Is Said time machine traveler it is said the elves of N’gara stuck in your wall live in a land where light itself is liquid and they drink it by the thimbleful —Denny E. Marshall or shotglass by the pitcher or the bucket and you can tell the time of day each vintage was harvested by the flavor, the aroma, the fine, finial notes of emotion juice of early morning sunlight comes sweetened with dew-pearls and hints of cinnamon noonday sunlight the most robust— powerful, heady, restorative ambergold light harvested just before sunset carries textured notes of cheese and chocolate, evoking the lonely songs of coyotes and doves translucent moonlight yields a fine wine, consumed sparingly and only on special occasions Balancing Act while the rare and sparkling nectar Evanescent forged by the starlight space elevator under a new moon cable climbing acrobat— bears echoes of secrets whispered at night orbital climber falls: by the rustling leaves blazing re-entry, of ancient oaks Icara—
—Lisa Timpf Apollo catches her in his chariot
—D. A. Xiaolin Spires, Deborah L. Davitt, and Gretchen Tessmer
Star*Line 39 Winter 2019 Self-Portrait as Pretty Monster
Not all monsters have tentacles and pointed teeth. Some of us have smooth shiny hair, rosy cheeks and friendly smiles.
After the pandemics and maelstroms, I learned more about being a monster. We became mutants and we were built for subsistence.
We ate mushrooms grown in closets and picked sorrel and watercress from streams. We learned to befriend animals like wolves and bears to lead us to better prey. We learned to crack bones with rough hands. Our insides were no longer normal.
Some of us glowed at night, which proved helpful during the periodic blackouts, now that the sun had lost some of its luster in the permanent smog. We forgot which of us were leaders, so we all followed our own paths, drowning dreams and watching the firelight. Some of us studied microscopes and made up cures.
We forgot our names, but we learned what we were. Out here in the last gleaming, we cultivated fear of shadows.
We became murderous. We taught poison and trigger and weighing down pockets with stones. We learned our language with new tongues. We learned the magic of survival in a suitcase. You won’t recognize me as the monster, but if I enter your home, beware the magic of moonlight, the quick movements that bewitch. Beware the gold in my hair, the flamingo dress and the ruby lips, the blood smear on my skin, the smell of smoke in the air, uranium in the dirt and grass, the last flare of green fire.
Underneath my skin is some other story, a story of evolution and desire, vectors and radiation burns, that ends in extermination.
—Jeannine Hall Gailey
Star*Line 40 Winter 2019 Why You Should Buy Your Loved One a Final Resting Place on Sepulcrum Minor 20% Off Sale Going On Now
Come, see for yourself, the grass whispers in Elegies, the perfumed seas rise and fall And scent the breezes as different colors Filter from each day’s sky. The intention Behind this glamorousness is to call Attention away from grief and loss. As You can see, in our full spectrum brochures, No detail has been ignored, starting with Artisans who were trained by the great world Sculptors. Picked from the various cultures Of galactic beings who planet-smith, Every stone is hewn, every green thing furled To order. Each crypt, tomb, and death bubble Is custom made. We take every trouble.
—Juleigh Howard-Hobson
Quantum Hearts
“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” —Niels Bohr
We exist as a quantum pair Love in one reflects in the other We are everything and nothing at once A Schrödinger love in a classical world
The strange charm of entangled hearts Binds us, whether near or far Missing each other sparks Spooky action at a distance
Passion and respect swirl In supersymmetry The Theory of Everything Blooms from quantum hearts
—Stace Johnson
Star*Line 41 Winter 2019 WORLDWIDE SPECULATIVEXenoPoetry POETRY IN TRANSLATION
无题
类地行星探测器驶向广袤宇宙 52赫兹鲸在深海呼唤同类 异乡打工仔脸上的笑吹起安第斯山脉的风
—李诗怡 Untitled
the exoplanet satellite probe sails across the expanse of the universe—
as a whale calls out from the deep sea in 52 hertz for his brethren
in a faraway land, the smile of a migrant worker conjures the gust of the Andes Mountains
—Shiyi Li Translated by D. A. Xiaolin Spires
Eye to the Telescope
Eye to the Telescope, the SFPA’s quarterly online speculative poetry journal, is available to read at eyetothetelescope.com. The January 2019 theme isCrossroads , edited by Heather Moser. The next theme, for April 2019, is Sports & Games, with Lisa Timpf editing. Deadline: March 15. Guidelines: eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html. Interested in editing an issue of ETTT? See eyetothetelescope.com/editettt.html.
Star*Line 42 Winter 2019 Snubbed bustling city towers and cyborgs abound To be passed over in favor yet I am alone of tigers, lions, giraffes is one matter. —Marcus Vance
But to have been spurned for sparrows, spoonbills— to be scorned for scorpions! Paprika Dust To be bettered by buttercups, belittled by broccoli, The Sandman sprinkles beaten by bedbugs! dust in my eyes—
Not that we had aspired Cinnamon, paprika. to alien abduction, merely to merit it. I hear the whispers of a gruff man groaning, Specimens of each species “Goshdarnit, this ain’t conspicuously collected, sleep sand, carefully collated. Marta packed us the wrong bags Each species save two: again.” ourselves and the ostriches ostentatiously ostracized. “Mm,” I say as I crash—
In newfound sisterhood, Wisps of another world, we cherish the ostrich, savoring the physics of forgiving its foibles. other dimensions, floating, falling, tingly and spicy. Ostrich sanctuaries in every town; ostrich toys for every baby; I wake up, not with sleep no wedding without feathers. in my eyes, but with —Mary Soon Lee bell pepper, jaranda, jariza—
pimentón cinnamon tentacles, cardamom suckers agridulce licorice ink sac, all-spice beak what part isn’t yummy? tears.
—D. A. Xiaolin Spires —D. A. Xiaolin Spires
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