Escape Velocity Note to Accompany the Plaque even the moon blinks! on Pioneer 10 silver flash—10,000 miles Exploring and climbing … climbing.… Boxholder: Please do not discard —James S. Dorr this unsolicited solicitation. It is not a bulk mailing Free radical seeks and postage was high. the Cosmos same. Let’s form If our overture is unwelcome, a bonded pair! please mark it “Return to Sender.” At least we will know • • • • ••• • • • • Snowball’s Chance —Stephen M Wilson there is a Postman. minimalist science poetry Alas —David Lunde Poor Pluto, you ID crisis iceball: Disqualified outsider or Tombaugh’s Distant darling? Demonized by Kuiper Beltway schemers, Politics spells Wish List Meltdown. Dumb as a rock— the very first thing —Ann K. Schwader Martian meteorite I’m going to get for myself, won’t talk to NASA when custom DNA retailoring becomes affordable, —Mary Turzillo is a bright blue tongue. if an okapi can have one, Snapshot: The Voyagers I don’t see why I can’t.

still out there my friends? —FJ Bergmann braiding moons, banded spheres in pixilated light

—James S. Dorr

Comet Kohoutek spent a hard night in the Oort cloud, lacked tail: bad hair day.

—Mary Turzillo To join SFPA, visit sfpoetry.com or e-mail [email protected]. Spacemail Correspondence Cover illustration: Wading in the Gravity Stream, © 2010 Denny Marshall • • • • ••• • • • • Letters take years To fax at lightspeed, Acknowledgments: selected by Originals centuries to deliver. David C. Kopaska-Merkel Asimov’s Science Fiction; Astropoetica; hurricanecountry.blog- Write soon. spot.com, Poetic Variables: Science Poems For January 2011, Elis- for the sa Malcohn; Crossings: Beyond the Parallel Lines; Hummingbird; Science Fiction & Fantasy —Ruth Berman Layang Layang; Nightfishing in Great Sky River (David Lunde); Poets of the Fantastic; Scifaikuest; Star*line; TransVersions Poetry Association About Minimalist Science Poetry Partial Solar Eclipse This pamphlet showcases minimalist poetry, which includes Wide-Open Spaces Her black well-known forms such as haiku as well as other very short dedicated to John Wayne lunar eyelid poems. A previous pamphlet of short poems was published gives a half-hearted wink, by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association: There are her golden gaze still uncovered. The Universe in Three Lines. This pamphlet and others are 13 billion Blinding. available free at sfpoetry.com /promos.html. light years between me Great sky river floods, That pamphlet included scifaiku, defined as a form of Entices our flimsy craft, —Elissa Malcohn science-fiction poetry first announced by Tom Brinck with and the edge of the universe. Cataract of stars … his 1995 Scifaiku Manifesto. Inspired by Japanese haiku, sci- faiku explore science, science fiction, and other speculative And that’s —David Lunde themes, such as fantasy and horror. Scifaiku are based on the way I like it, a fiery end the principles and form of haiku but can deviate from haiku pardner. earth crossing asteroid path structure. ash sinks into soil The Scifaiku Manifesto stresses the following points: —Peter Payack nourishing ground for new life genesis in silence waits • Immediacy • Minimalism —Shelly Bryant • Human Insight Some of the science poems in Exploring the Cosmos are scifaiku; others are not. Collectively, they explore scientists, Grand Raiment scientific discovery, the nature of humanity, and (of course) Hanny’s Voorwerp the future. Far-off supernova Falsegreen and gaseous Weaves its massive death shroud, It leaps, anuran A centuries-old cloak. Twixt spiral lilypads Great blast of brightness fades, A Trivial Matter Depositing newborn stars Hidden in darkest dust. Lonely tadpoles in a cosmic pond Hidden in darkest dust, To a neutrino Rarer hypernova the rest of the universe —Marsheila Rockwell Glows with shocked oxygen, is immaterial. Its gamma rays bursting ’Round buttoned-up black hole. —Peter Payack A Hollander’s Secret Weapon: 1609 —Elissa Malcohn

Invention of a spyglass Skylab 1973–79 sent Galileo off to ponder a re-invention unintended for a combat situation. Fragments of space debris Epitaph for Homo floresiensis and me, floating in vacuum A twenty-power increase observing the Earth. in the lens, he turned it on the sky, While ice-age men hunted mastodons on the ice, opening up our galaxy dwarf humans on Flores Isle lived peaceful lives. Humans gazing up for harmless speculation. We served in bondage to the law of kill-or-die; see only the infinite without prey or competition, they lived in paradise. skin of glassine sky. Three centuries have passed, radar’s replaced the glass, Twenty thousand years later, we I start to tumble yet still we war, and still, recall them but in myth and children’s stories. from orbit, slowly slitting we haven’t touched the stars. We’re now the killers we had to fight to be; open the envelope of night. they, the wee, fey folk of dreams and memories. —Marge Simon —Carolyn Clink —Geoffrey A. Landis