TheDwarf Stars anthology is a selection of the best speculative poems of ten lines or fewer from the previous year, nominated by the Science Fiction Poetry Association membership and chosen for publication by the editors. From this anthology, SFPA members vote for the best poem. The winner receives the Dwarf Stars Award, which is analogous to the SFPA Rhysling Awards, given annually for poems of any length. Cover: Tooth Fairy by Michaela Eaves ~12" × 16" watercolor & gouache © 2014 www.michaelaeaves.com The text was set in Arno Pro and Charcuterie fonts, using Adobe InDesign. © 2016 gScience Fiction Poetry Association sfpoetry.com All rights to poems retained by individual poets. Dwarf Stars 2016 THE BEST VERY SHORT SPECULATIVE POEMS PUBLISHED IN 2015 Lesley Wheeler edited by & Jeannine Hall Gailey Introduction A Letter from the Editors LW: Welcome to the 2016 Dwarf Stars anthology! JHG: Lesley and I were so impressed with the quality of the nominations this year. LW: Yes, and grateful that so many writers nominated poems they admired by other people. That’s generous work. Deborah P Kolodji, founder of this anthology series, deserves especial thanks for all her scouting. JHG: We also pored over journals—online and print, speculative and “regular”—to find short poems that would fit well into theDwarf Stars anthology for the Science Fiction Poetry Association. We hope we’ve represented a wide variety within the limits of what is considered speculative in style, substance, and sources. LW: Jeannine lives in Washington State and I live in Virginia, so while we sat in our distant offices reading physical books and journals, the editing process was entirely email-based. I thought we might haggle more over favorites, and even over definitions of “speculative,” but we tended to agree. You’ll see many dwarf stars here radiate an irresistible shine. And a few of them wink. JHG: We found many other poems that were wonderful and speculative, but too long. We looked through 2015’s many books of poetry to find poems short enough and speculative enough to qualify. (Sorry, Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things—a terrific book—too bad the shortest poem was 11 lines!) It was difficult to narrow it down as much as we did, but I think the SFPA members will be as fascinated as we were by the poems iv Dwarf Stars 2016 chosen—some scifaiku, some short lyric poems, and even a short prose poem or two. We both mused that if some writers had chosen slightly different line breaks, they would have been eligible for the award. And how many literary journals we read through that didn’t have anything that was ten lines or less—a bit of a surprise! Something to think about when you all are writing and editing your poems in 2016. LW: We hope you enjoy this year’s constellation, and that it inspires you to more brevity and brilliance in 2016. JHG: We were so honored and happy to have the chance to read this year's poems. We hope you enjoy these outstanding poems as much as we did. —Jeannine Hall Gailey & Lesley Wheeler June 2016 z Only current SFPA members may vote for the 2016 Dwarf Stars Award. Choose first, second, and third choice poems and select them in the online voting form: (link posted at sfpoetry.com/ds/16dwarfstars.html) or send by postal mail to: Shannon Connor Winward SFPA Secretary Voting deadline: 117 McCann Rd August 31, 2016! Newark DE 19711 v CONGRATULATIONS TO LAST YEAR’S DWARF STARS AWARD WINNERS! 1st Place: “abandoned nursing home” Greg Schwartz Tales of the Talisman 9:3 2nd Place: Princess: A Life Jane Yolen Mythic Delirium, 2014 3rd Place: The Square Root of Doppelgängers Robert Borski Star*Line 37:2 Table of Contents Accident-Prone Susan Rooke 1 Alice was chasing white rabbits out of a black hole John C. Mannone 1 Anomaly F. J. Bergmann 2 “at the barre” Julie Bloss Kelsey 2 “awake after surgery” Sandra J. Lindow 2 “back on earth” Robert Piotrowski 2 Bees Fell Asleep Grzegorz Wróblewski 2 (translated from the Polish by Piotr Gwiazda) Black Hull, Greenheart Susan Grimm 3 Boston to Providence Carrie Etter 3 Classified II Robert Borski 4 “Comicon” Susan Burch 4 Creation Myth (1981) Iliana Rocha 4 “crumbling castle” Greer Woodward 4 “daybreak” Helen Buckingham 5 The Doorman F. J. Bergmann 5 Driving 80 mph at Night William Cullen, Jr. 5 “the economy of a solar system …” Ralf Bröker 6 A Field Amelia Martens 6 Gretel Robert Borski 6 “hell-bent” Susan Burch 6 How We Sing Katharine Coles 7 jellyfish Beth Langford 7 “late winter” Kristen Deming 7 The Man with Red Eyes Christina Sng 8 “methane rain” Joshua Gage 8 “night sky” Susan Antolin 8 vii Science Fiction Poetry Association Notes for Next Week’s Sermon David C. Kopaska-Merkel 8 November rain LeRoy Gorman 9 Placebo Effect Roberta Beary 9 Scissors Series Arielle Greenberg 9 “shapeshifter” John Reinhart 9 “she said” dl mattila 9 “steam rises” David McKee 10 “tail in Winnipeg” Sandra J. Lindow 10 “they claimed our star” C.R. Harper 10 Thor and Saturn’s Tête-á-tête Maceo J. Whitaker 10 “time portal wedding” LeRoy Gorman 11 “upturned faces" Deborah P Kolodji 11 “warm the blur …” Michelle Tennison 11 We Begin This Way Stacey Balkun 11 Weathering Sandi Leibowitz 12 What Dolls Eat Karen Bovenmyer 12 “when hell freezes over” Deborah P Kolodji 13 “the window cleaner’s ladder” Mark Holloway 13 Wish Rebecca Buchanan 13 viii Dwarf Stars 2016 ACCIDENT-PRONE Trouble seeks you, requests your hand where it does not belong, no other invitation so compelling. You touch darkness though it burns, wish to know what comes uncoiled in the pocket of the snake hole, what heart beats without its head. What poison-bright legs propel the leaf that creeps the forest floor of its own accord. You'll prick your finger on the spindle of the spider's fang while sifting through the crumble in a live oak hollow. 100 years of sleep await you in the eye of that tree. —Susan Rooke ALICE WAS CHASING WHITE RABBITS OUT OF A BLACK HOLE darker than Kentucky nights when it exploded everywhere at the same time. Heaven inflated hot with light, and she rode a gamma ray stretching all the way into radio just to whisper static into the statuesque antenna—a giant horn—listening for secrets from the edge of the invisible universe. —John C. Mannone 1 Science Fiction Poetry Association ANOMALY Comes the night you turn on the television and it explodes. So you sit there in the dark house, a cascade of moonlight spilling over the windowsill, and finally rise to swim toward the door, which opens inward. You may be a monster, but that doesn’t make you a created monster. Someone is coming up the street at midnight. Someone is walking backward. at the barre —F. J. Bergmann the graceful arms of a spiral galaxy awake after surgery —Julie Bloss Kelsey hallucinating star charts fentanyl flowers back on earth —Sandra J. Lindow I can't help but feel like the alien again —Robert Piotrowski BEES FELL ASLEEP "As we slowly forget the dead, we slowly draw closer to them ..." says a dour man met by accident. It's true. Bees fell asleep and I remember nobody. In yellow leaves I don't recognize your wrinkled face. —Grzegorz Wróblewski (translated from the Polish by Piotr Gwiazda) 2 Dwarf Stars 2016 BLACK HULL, GREENHEART the courts of winter are snow-covered utterance self- binding a fine-tuned quiver in the air from which streams arrows of light letter openers to meaning the trees bedizened besmirched them having been present the letterbox where I emptied my mouth I could have lived in your watchpocket (liar) I could have lit up like a matchbox like Shackleton I have named my body “Endurance” embroidery of being beholden beware —Susan Grimm BOSTON TO PROVIDENCE Two trains for the same city arrive from opposite directions—we board in unease, in chill incipient spring shade— my own incipience recurring in its untimely, ungraphable past the budding trees, at the end of and along each branch and twig a small green— past the flowering dogwoods and cherries milk and pink aloft and scattered beneath rumbling, whistling forward toward city and other selves known or emerging or even as the trees begin to blur —Carrie Etter 3 Science Fiction Poetry Association CLASSIFIED II For Sale: Used Time Machine. Must sell by year of Grandfather's birth. Comicon— every Darth Vader —Robert Borski says he’s my father —Susan Burch CREATION MYTH (1981) I was born drunk & paisley, vestige from the womb. My face laughed into itself— eyes sank into earlobe & nostrils warped into seahorse. I was vanilla bean & Mexican vanilla & amniotic dessert, & my mother did everything she could not to devour me. I became comino & ajo & hibiscus— all good for grinding. Mocajete, first, & knuckle decomposing mass & matter, baby & mother. When she tried to stillbear me it hurt until she cried diamonds while my father was swapping spit with the agave. —Iliana Rocha crumbling castle a patch of witchflowers —Greer Woodward 4 Dwarf Stars 2016 daybreak blackdog pixelating —Helen Buckingham THE DOORMAN That poem was a revelation; it really opened a door. You descend from the limousine onto the mandatory red carpet. When you approach the threshold, the poem stands there attentively, gloved hand on the crystal doorknob, gold braid on its epaulets. It smiles and waves you onward, with a genial nod. You step through onto the rocky promontory, shading your eyes with your hand and squinting against the glare.