Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • "Swipe Right on Stapelia" by Adrianna Gordey
  • "I Stole His Face, His Guillotine," by Akis Linardos
  • "Astrosommelier," by R. Mac Jones
  • "All Hallows’ Star," by Brian Hugenbruch
  • "Generation Ship," by Akua Lezli Hope

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: ch-ch-ch-changes

Firstly, thank you to all who voted and made your voices heard concerning the SFPA’s new AI/LLM policy. It’s always a great thing to see democracy at work. And congratulations to all of the Rhysling finalists and to the Elgin and Dwarf Stars nominees! It’s so wonderful to see that there is so much incredible speculative poetry out in the world! Keep up the great work, my friends.

In other announcements, I will be moving on as editor of Star*Line next year and we will be in search of our next editor. Please see the announcements about how to apply for the position. Reading so much speculative poetry and working with all of you incredible poets is a rewarding and delightful experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what my successor will do with Star*Line.

In the meantime, I am thrilled to be working on the next few upcoming issues and eagerly await all of your submissions. Good luck to all of our award nominees, and don't forget to get your submissions in for this year's contest.

—Jean-Paul L. Garnier, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Swipe Right on Stapelia," by Adrianna Gordey

The real-life reincarnation of a Piranha Plant,
the carrion flower is single & ready to mingle.

Honeybees swipe left on the chin hairs flowering
along her petals, so she perfumes herself with pheromones.

Stapelia’s sexy signature scent is corpse couture,
the ripe funk of rotting flesh. Flies dive bomb

the stretch mark spines tattooed on her leaves,
ready to pollinate & pleasure her all summer long.

Her puckering corona mesmerizes the flies &
convinces them to cradle their eggs inside her.

The stench is deceptive, though. Her stink tricks
parents into thinking the larvae will hatch to a buffet,

but they starve. Stapelia wraps pollen sacs around insects
struggling to free themselves. Her starfish blossoms

transform into tombs for the larvae & cribs for future
stinky singles. The carrion queen must be crafty to germinate.

Her malodorous fragrance masks a mother struggling
to survive, to sow the next generation of smelly succulents.

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"I Stole His Face, His Guillotine," by Akis Linardos

Your royal stench reaches me,
Full-time tyrant, part-time executioner
You, the king who decreed death row
For men who bedded rebellious shapeshifters

The blade glimmers overhead
Refracting sunlight in my eyes,
Obscuring your half-rotten form
You who decreed the Passionate must see their death
Lying upside down upon the gallows
Like your own shapeshifting wife

And still you thirst for vengeance,
Self-deluded that shapeshifters stole your queen
When it was you who slit her throat

Now you shift the debt upon the prince’s lover, claiming his
execution holy
Ignorant to your son’s true nature, like you were to your own wife’s
Seduced by gold, by status, by skewed masculine perception
The tears you’ll shed for a thing you so despised
Father, you’ll never know you killed your own son,
As I claimed my lover’s form for mine

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"Astrosommelier," by R. Mac Jones

Can we say this Pinot Noir
from grapes grown in
a suspended vineyard
orbiting, in stasis,
has earthy undertones?
Contains a steel and glass
goût de terroir?

I get the hint of raspberry,
the soupçon of cosmic radiation

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"All Hallows’ Star," by Brian Hugenbruch

We who stand on the outer hull
of this starship, bearing apples
and replicated hazelnuts as offering,
have no saints to celebrate
as we orbit this dying blue giant—
space knows only martyrs

We mourn for those who stepped
into the shadow of the lonely void
but lost their way, untethered

We mourn for those who disappeared
when meteors destroyed the bridge
in celestial vengeance

We mourn for those who tried to fix
the thrusters, and died in fire
bright enough to rival Mother Star

We mourn for those who climbed
against the asymptotic well of gravity
but failed, infinitely crushed

And we mourn for those who,
distraught by all the death, tried to wrest
control of the ship from we believers

We cast our offerings outward
some of the apples gravitate
toward the bodies we tossed from airlocks

We who stand on the outer hull,
in the shadow of the lonely void
with celestial vengeance
bright enough to rival stars,
mourn for those who climbed
to wrest this ship from us
we cast our offerings outward.

Space knows only martyrs.

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"Generation Ship," by Akua Lezli Hope

Though this is no prison, it might as well be. Everything is white or grey on this generation ship that is our home until we find home. For all the things we thought to bring, pigments were not among them. The white walls, white halls and corridors, the grey metals, an oppressive sameness, interrupted only by another’s body or scent. Yet even here too, variation is muted by familiarity and dailiness, by eating the same paste, until the tiny harvests of something different in the small garden. The ritual of the arrival of tomatoes, their acrid stench is an intrusive delight. Each kernel of multicolored corn is savored, tiny, we knew, from records of what they were on Urth. The Japanese sweet potatoes are exquisite to tastebuds informed by sameness. The sameness was a danger no one had anticipated. There was no unexpected breeze, no insect song, no bird chatter, no leaf rustle, nothing uncontrolled or unanticipated outside the once-ordinary wonders of the garden.

our eyes starved for color
fights erupt in the ship’s garden
to touch purple eggplant

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * Jean-Paul Garnier
• SFPA Announcements
• President's Message * Colleen Anderson
• From the Small Press * Herb Kauderer, John Reinhart, Lisa Timpf
• Stealth SF * “What Would Hank Do?” * Denise Dumars
• SpecPo Publishing * Interview with AJ Odasso * Jean-Paul Garnier

Art

• Staring at the Night Sky * Denny E. Marshall
• The Interrupter * Denny E. Marshall
• Scars of the Wingman * Denny E. Marshall
• Boitata * Dante Luiz
• Carranca * Dante Luiz

Poetry

• advice to the subliminals * SR Tombran
• Astronomer’s Anniversary Message * Howard V. Hendrix
• [Atlantic dusk] * Joshua St. Claire
• We Carry Our Ghosts to the Stars * Richard Leis
• The Light Ship * Arukoya Tomais
• Unwound * Jean-Marie Romana
• Time Cannot Contain Me * Jenna Hanchey
• Stealing a Moment * Ian Li
• Technorati * A J Dalton
• Night Song * Johanna Haas
• NFS * Alison McBain
• The Loner * Matthew Wilson
• [23rd century] * Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
• The Museum of Etymology * F. J. Bergmann
• Einstein Dreaming * James Machell
• [Cold hand in mine] * Ian Hunter
• [end times] * M. R. Defibaugh
• [torches & pitchforks] * Greg Schwartz
• Sunfire Songs * Audrey Sullivan
• [lunar colony—] * Greg Schwartz
• [monthly expenses] * Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
• A Nosegay of June Bugs * Gerri Leen
• Protein Paradise * Yuliia Vereta
• [triple redundancy] * Richard Magahiz
• The Blues for Winter White * Lauren McBride
• [when I die] * Robin Wyatt Dunn
• The Wandering Kind * Robert Frazier
• The Mean Average * Gretchen Tessmer
• Corporate Response * Jacob Bergstresser
• Plumbing Problems * John Reinhart
• Souvenir * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• So You Accidentally Swiped Right on a Robot * Eric Brown
• [with heads] * Albert Schlaht
• Surviving Spouse * Marge Simon
• Postcard from the Red Planet * Lisa Timpf
• Protocol * Anna Cates
• [latest music hits] * Lauren McBride
• Crystalline Anthropogenic Technofossils * L. Acadia
• Psychological Concretism à la Poe * Howard V. Hendrix
• [the Whale’s] * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Neural Text Messaging * Garrett Carroll
• hook-up * D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• Heavy Skies * Denny E. Marshall
• Same As It Ever Was * Alan Ira Gordon
• Chronoverse * Jeffery Allen Tobin
• [time travel layover] *LeRoy Gorman
• [Scrying mirror] * Sarah Cannavo
• Swipe Right on Stapelia * Adrianna Gordey
• Saving Money Through Sensory Deprivation * Casey Aimer
• Sons Of Old Serpents * Juan M. Perez
• [gorgonian chemo] * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Elf-Ensnarled * Devan Barlow
• [Medusa’s mansion raided] * Randall Andrews
• Rhedynog * Marisca Pichette
• Containers * Juan M. Perez
• ADHD Spaceship * Garrett Carroll
• I Stole His Face, His Guillotine * Akis Linardos
• Duplicate, Unreachably Far from You * Mary A. Turzillo
• Astrosommelier * R. Mac Jones
• Ball Lightning * Benjamin Whitney Norris
• Perfectionist * John H. Dromey
• The Civilization Starship * Garrett Carroll
• Wall of Eyes * Daniel Gene Barlekamp
• Stasis Beauty * Tabor Skreslet
• Current Miranda Rights for Cougars * Sharmon Gazaway
• Toasting Progress * John Reinhart
• Space Psychiatry * Anna Cates
• All Hallows’ Star * Brian Hugenbruch
• First Snow * Mary Soon Lee
• One Over Zero * Richard Magahiz
• Data Night * Adele Gardner
• Variations on the word “time” * Shane Morin
• [About the data lake] * Monica Louzon
• Birth * Pixie Bruner
• Space Commanders’ Break-Up * Raven Jakubowski
• Desert Burial * Sarah Cannavo
• Methaneless * Debby Feo
• Generation Ship * Akua Lezli Hope
• [gravity] * LeRoy Gorman
• Skin in Space * Casey Aimer
• New World—Old Ways * Lauren McBride
• Numbers on Doors: 014 * Yuliia Vereta
• Astronaut’s pet * Eva Papasoulioti
• Lucy and the Elements * s.c. virtes
• Sand and Sarcophagus * Cathy Bryant
• back Gods and Fish * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• What Cosmologists Read * Mary Soon Lee