Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • Vampirette by Kathleen A. Lawrence
  • Alien Dowry by Robert Borski
  • Survivorship by F. J. Bergmann
  • Flowers for Asimov by William Shaw
  • For Preserves by Cassandra Rose Clarke

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Hail and Farewell

Ave atque vale. Probably the Roman poet Catullus’s most renowned phrase, the closing words of his elegy for his brother. I employ this greeting in tribute to F. J. Bergmann, former editor of Star*Line, my predecessor. I hail Jeannie’s wonderful work with the magazine: her devotion to the genre of speculative poetry, her even greater devotion to the writers and artists she published over the last five years, and her supreme devotion to poetry overall, both as an editor and also as a exquisite and serious writer of poetry. She is one hard act to follow, as I have already learned in the weeks since I began reading submissions and accepting (and alas, rejecting) poems. Jeannie typically responded within a week—usually sooner—while my own response time has been quite a bit longer: four times longer at least. In following Catullus’s formula, I now also say farewell to Jeannie, but only farewell with regard to her editing these pages, because she will continue to be a force in speculative poetry and in poetry and literature as a whole. In fact, you will find one of her own amazing poems in this issue. Probably my title here should instead be hail and hail—ave atque ave. I hail Jeannie and wish her all the best in her continuing literary ventures. And I hail you, dear poets and artists as well as gentle readers: let’s tail the wyrms through the wormholes, trailblaze a fantasia of white-hole adventures. Everybody ready? Says Tenth Doctor: Allons-y! Dorothy: Follow the yellow brick road!

—Vince Gotera, Star*Line Editor

P.S. We are glad to celebrate Native American Heritage Month (November in the U.S.) with cover art by Anita Endrezze, Yaqui poet and artist.

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Vampirette," by Kathleen A. Lawrence

I woke at sunset
wanting to be kinda bad.
Not really horrid.

Just a bit naughty.
Just a little attention.
Not jailhouse crazy.

Just want some action.
Got a hankering for red.
Got a need to feed.

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"Alien Dowry," by Robert Borski

Six canisters of argon,
a pair of anti-gravity boots,
and a nice tentacle trimmer,
preferably gold-plated—

this seemed a modest-enough
asking price, but all the Earth-
bride brought to our wedding
was an open heart.

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"Survivorship," by F. J. Bergmann

Eventually those of us who were left learned
to identify all the different alien ships—
there were the Shuttles, gently descending
on a globe of fusion, like a silver-plumaged
broody hen settling on an incandescent egg;
the Borers, inverted torches wriggling straight
into the earth (we assumed they were changing
something they didn’t like, way down there).
The Candelabras would park, anchor themselves,
and extend branches, doing nothing we could see
except emitting orange light—and heavy radiation,
of course. The Scythes had enormous blades
to clear and level vast, formerly mountainous
areas to what are now desolate, arid flatlands.

We avoid all of them as best we can, constantly
(but cautiously) seeking additional information
related to risk assessment and management.
We have printed a reference handbook, listing
the current makeup of their fleet (in this region,
at least), available for barter at a nominal rate.

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"Flowers for Asimov," by William Shaw

Metal shortages
Impose a new robotics:
Building with flowers.

Chlorophyll conducts
The electronic impulse
Better than copper.

Plus, user feedback,
When diodes turn to petals,
Boosts dramatically.

In summer, the streets
Unfold fluorescent colour
As AI blossoms.

Low-carbon, low-cost,
Even their waste products form
Anti-depressants.

We're still exploring
The healthcare applications;
Android therapy.

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"For Preserves," by Cassandra Rose Clarke

You should only harvest sunlight
on days when the clouds are heaviest,
and the air is damp with chill.
Otherwise the harvest will burn the palms
of your hands, leaving the skin
red and blistered.

Bring the sunlight inside and
shatter it into fragments
like the stained light that
lies broken on the floors of cathedrals.
To preserve, pack the fragments
with salt and spices—cinnamon, cloves,
coriander are traditional—in a sealed jar.
Set in a dark cool place and forget about it.

This is key.

Forgetting is like the yeast in
your loaves of bread, the baking powder in
your cakes. Without forgetting, the sunlight
will not cure,
only spoil
and rot.

Wait for many years,
through childbirth and divorces,
love affairs and hopelessness,
though finding God and losing god,
through deaths and stolen moments.
All this makes the forgetting easy.

Decades later, you will open the door to your pantry
or cellar, or whatever cool dry place you found
in your home. You will be on your way to fetch
something else: a can of fig jam, a bottle of
sweet wine. And you will catch something on
the farthest edge of your vision, a bright patch that
you will think, for one paralyzing second, is the
cataracts settling in.

But no.

It will be your jars of sunlight, waiting for you,
incandescent
orbited by near-microscopic planetary bodies.
Worlds the size of dust motes
spinning in heliocentric arcs
around the sun you preserved
with salt and cinnamon
on a dreary day in your youth.

If you followed my instructions exactly
(and if you are lucky)
one of those worlds will blossom
with oceans and oxygen.
Life will crawl from the water
and evolve into something unimaginable
until you see it through the lens of an
electron microscope

An entire civilization
born because you went out in the rain and the cold
and plucked sunlight with your bare hands.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * Vince Gotera
• President’s Message * Bryan Thao Worra
• From the Small Press • David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Sandra J. Lindow
• Stealth SF: Tacos al Pastoral • Denise Dumars

Art

• Little Monsters * Denny E. Marshall
• Young Witch to Saturn * Christina Sng
• Egress * Marge Simon

Poetry

• Vampirette * Kathleen A. Lawrence
• Little Red in Haiku * Christina Sng
• Attack from Outer Space * Jeffrey Park
• [instead of a halo] * Julie Bloss Kelsey
• Medical Tourism * Davian Aw
• Urban Apparition * Sergio Ortiz
• Nothing Knew * Soren James
• Alien Dowry * Robert Borski
• Survivorship * F. J. Bergmann
• Well, It’s Something * Juleigh Howard-Hobson
• Prince Ichor’s Bouncy Castle * John W. Sexton
• Treasures of Tyrants * Matthew Wilson
• Skyrocketing Sales * Lauren McBride
• Journey into Neptune * Christina Sng
• Next Day Shipping * R. Mac Jones
• Wet Work * James Dorr
• Midwest Wonder Expo * Amelia Gorman
• Charity of the Gods * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• In Silico * John Richard Trtek
• If I Ask * Cas Blomberg
• [Single Venus . . . ] * Matthew Wilson
• [requiem for a starship garden] * Greer Woodward
• The Ghosts of Sea Monsters * Herb Kauderer
• Blood Bite * Bruce Boston
• [spring in antartica] * D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• arrival * John Reinhart
• On Halloween Night * John Grey
• Flowers for Asimov * William Shaw
• Draught * Mike Allen
• Egress * Marge Simon
• In the Future * Gene Twaronite
• [alien / restructuring] * Susan Burch
• [down to earth] * C.R. Harper
• You Sing Your Murder Ballad * Gillian Daniels
• The Big Bang * Dante Mori
• Waiting * John Richard Trtek
• [time travel dining] * LeRoy Gorman
• Wayfaring King * Beth Cato
• [gateway to ancient cultures] * Robert Shmigelsky
• [space seed chutes] * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Vaginoplasticine * Alison Rumfitt
• One Day * Lisa Timpf
• When the Fates Spin Ballads * Chiamaka Onu-Okpara
• For Preserves * Cassandra Rose Clarke
• Auction of Dead Worlds * Matthew Wilson
• October 31st at Midnight * John C. Mannone
• The Valet of the Shadow of Death * David Clink
• Chronosphere * Angelo Niles
• When the Aliens Arrived on Earth to Visit the Dogs * Alan Ira Gordon
• incandescent darkness * John Reinhart
• They Come Walking * Deborah L. Davitt
• Elemental * Deborah L. Davitt
• She Came to See Me * Kim Whysall-Hammond
• [Vast tundra …] * Ronald A. Busse
• Extant III * Angelo Niles
• Zombie Idioms * Herb Kauderer
• Revenants * Bruce Boston
• medi(a)cation * Frank Leblanc
• Sunrise on the Flat Earth * Ruth Berman
• [rotting fingers] * Greg Schwartz
• [martian odyssey] * Kate Lisinska
• [bruised universe] * Ann K. Schwader
• [Absolutely no parking] * Matthew Wilson
• Spellbinder * B.R. Strahan
• Shapechanger * Kevin Griffin
• Carbon Footprint * Ann K. Schwader
• The Jinni’s Wish * Anna Kander
• Exercise 2050 * Mary Soon Lee