Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • Where the White Thistle Grows by WC Roberts
  • Fall Of The Church of Ussher by Robert Borski
  • By Moonlight by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
  • Errant Water by Alexandra Seidel

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Lily-gilding

I’m gratified by the number of submissions received for Star*Line since the beginning of the year. While not yet an unnavigable deluge, their frequency now approaches my capacity for prompt response. And this is a good thing! Marge Simon selected the poetry for this issue, her last as acting poetry editor; my selections will appear in the issues henceforth.

In poetry, like Coleridge I want to see the best words in their best order, rather than something thoughtlessly cobbled together. I admire poets who undertake ambitious concepts and difficult forms, but I would rather publish a minor vision, beautifully executed, than a more challenging project with intrusive flaws. As Quintilian wrote, “We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.”

I have very little tolerance for grammatical and logical flaws that interfere with reading, and feel strongly that it is an editor’s job to fix these—if not the poet’s! It seems to me that many speculative poets, poetry journals, and presses take very little care with these aspects of their finished product, and it drives me crazy. Misspellings, odd syntax, and missing or incorrect hyphens and italics are the equivalent of hearing someone read poetry aloud while mispronouncing words, inserting inappropriate pauses, inflecting speech incorrectly, and belching and scratching their crotch. Obviously, actual typos are just one of those things that happen. (My all-time favorite, from a fantasy novel-in-progress, went something like, “He slowly unbuttoned her blouse to reveal her beasts.”)

Online publications are eternally mutable (as long as one remembers the username and password …), but paper-and-ink publications require getting it right the first time—or, at least, in the final draft going to the printer. It’s difficult—impossible, really—for anyone to proofread their own work; we depend on several volunteers at Star*Line, as well as sending out the .pdf to all the contributors for proofing. While contributors rarely notice their own errata, they’ve proved invaluable in catching those of others.

It’s a given that neither this, nor any future issue, of Star*Line will be perfect (a perfectly crafted thing, it is said, attracts demons)—but we can try to approach that state more closely, albeit via the carping and pedantry of she whom you metaphorically behold before you.

Computers show the moon.

       Soon you’ll wake
from your living-room stupor—
a race of killers and heroes and nobodies.
If you don’t hate me, I’ve failed.

from “Dr. Cyclops’ Revenge”
by Michael Kriesel

See you in the future,

—F.J. Bergmann, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Where the White Thistle Grows," by WC Roberts

The lizard crawls out of a chink in the old stone wall
—to gaze at us
petrifying our ragged band in gray
reenactors, zealous of the past
come to hear the scales on his back
a Shenandoah pastorale
played on cymbals of questing and research

Chipped, gray stones in the wall
reach out to touch the only star that you can see
and lose a part of yourselves in the process—
the last judgment, a thing of beauty and release
on the dolmen and long barrows of Mosby’s rangers
who, after the travesty at Appomattox, carried on
bringing to the lips of Lincoln, and the nation, a hemlock cup
as the answer to questions that echo through the valley
where the white thistle grows
on the songs of the unvanquished, unyielding dead

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"Fall Of The Church of Ussher," by Robert Borski

                      “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. The beginning of time, according to this chronology, occurred at the beginning of the night which preceded the 23rd of October in the year 710 of the Julian period. [i.e. 4004 BC]”
                            —Bishop James Ussher

At dawn, once again,
Darwin’s finches,
the Geospizinae,
whirl out of the sky
like a contagion of hail
sent by the Archfiend
to assault the chief symbol
of the bishop’s eminence:
the towering cathedral that
like most such structures
represents Power & Glory
all across the kingdom.

Closer to tanagers than any sort
of finch, however,
the Galapagos birds are relentless
in their fury,
exploding out of the upper
reaches, beyond the tallowed light,
their beaks sized and shaped
for all manner of tasks
except perhaps prayer:
draining the color from the stained glass
as if it were nectar,
chivying free loose pieces of mortar
for nesting material,
drilling the wood of the great blond beams
that overlie nave and chancel,
searching for breakfast.
Most definitely, these are not seraphic wings
that flutter and detonate, filling
the air with unliturgical sound; rather,
it’s as if an army of Boschian grotesques
has been set loose within; an anti-Heaven
or base aviary.

Meanwhile, their corrosive droppings
splatter the pews and statuary
like poisonous graffiti (a whole subset
of which reads “Deus mori”),
pinions fall like manna
of little sustenance,
and not even incense or beeswax
can purge the ammoniac smell.

In the aftermath of each visit,
some attempt is made
to restore the church, to shore up
its hallowed edifice. According
to genealogical logs and the carbon-14
of Scripture, after all, it is close
to six millennia old and therefore
not about to vanish from the public
consciousness any time soon.
But clearly some of its cracks
are beyond superficial.

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"By Moonlight," by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

I’ll know which world I’m living in
if I can see the moon;
its fingerprint face
will tell me whether
this is my world, and yours,
or if I have slipped
on a patch of nowhere
and fallen into some other place.

But every night the moon,
like a shy fawn,
stays just out of sight,
demurely gathers its beams
about its ankles.
These tall buildings hide it from me,
and even the park
is shrouded by unquiet foliage;
by days its cool bowers enchant;
by night it’s full of narrow places
where no scintilla of moonlight
ever makes its way.

Our story’s trite, I know, but true:
we quarreled, I stormed out
and that’s when I think it happened.
I wandered heedlessly
under moon and shadow
with the tattered clouds flying
to and fro above.
I strayed far, and somehow
lost my way in the city
that has been my home
for more than eight years.

We fought over nothing!
We have our differences
but you must know I’d never leave,
not for weeks of
searching nightmarish streets
that feel less familiar day by day.

Our apartment must be here somewhere,
for this is my world,
if by moonlight,
and I just need to find the lanes I know.
But without the moon to guide me,
nights are cold and dark under empty stars.

And what will you be doing,
bathed in moonlight?
Searching for me
as I for you,
lost in crooked streets
under a barren sky?

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"Errant Water," by Alexandra Seidel

(Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Reinterpreted)

This was so much like her
pouring all the rivers into him
from sweet to brine to salt
along his lips and down his throat
drops spilling everywhere,
a trickle, a dripping,
errant water.…

This was so much like her
floods and waves rising
faster than the moon could pull
sirens drowned in her storms
giants buried in her tide
errant water
everywhere.…

This was so much like her
whispering the oceans calm
in her sleep
and holding his breath in her mouth
his rocking hands of sea salt
tangled in her hair
and on her face
errant water.…

This was so much like her
not just a rising
but rebirth
from his arms and his hands,
trickling gently from his mouth
like a spell and a charm
words stunned to whisper
from staring at her form
clasped like a gemstone in the froth-wet shell
errant water
at her feet

So much like her
to be like errant water
teasing, playful
elusive
her smile just a hint
of oceans born in wells and springs
she is soft as sea foam, crushing as waves
and she might just drift
anywhere
or everywhere
without ever holding her errant shape

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * F.J. Bergmann
• President’s Message • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• From the Small Press • Joshua Gage, Edward Cox, David C. Kopaska-Merkel Full reviews
• Stealth SF • Denise Dumars
• New Membership Rates
• Xenopoetry • translation by Fred W. Bergmann from The Gallant Necrophage and Other Love Poems • Alfredo Álamo

Poetry

• In The Plague Wind’s Wake • Kurt Newton
• The Church of Lucifer Falls • Ken Poyner
• (untitled) • Michael Conner
• Foreign Chef in a Small Town • Shirley Valencia
• An Old Story • Neal Wilgus
• The Last Gondolier • Kurt Newton
• Where the White Thistle Grows • WC Roberts
• Fall Of The Church of Ussher • Robert Borski
• Absent Fiends • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• The Girl With Bees In Her Mouth • Alexandra Seidel
• Urbana • Michael R. Fosburg
• By Moonlight • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• How Things Change • James S. Dorr
• LOL_ALIENS • Elizabeth Barrette
• Zombie Heaven • Kurt Newton
• Ain’t That Nice • Neal Wilgus
• Errant Water • Alexandra Seidel
• Infant Rat Heads • F.J. Bergmann
• What the stars have to say about it • F.J. Bergmann
• Zen Fish • David Glen Larson
• Downed • WC Roberts
• Relics • Anna Sykora
• Portrait of a Beautiful Young Woman on a Bookmark • Gary Every
• From Sky to Sea • Shelly Bryant
• The Twin Peoples in Love • Elizabeth Barrette
• The Foundation of the Martian Stock Exchange • Ken Poyner
• The Withering Hand • Darrell Lindsey
• How to Name Your Human • Michael Fosburg
• The Cat Lady • Ross Balcom
• Rapunzel’s Shadow • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• (untitled) • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• The Seed • Anna Sykora
• The Dragon Queen • A.B.S. Dudevant
• Orcus • Wade German
• The Face • Lela E. Buis
• 10 Things To Know About Staple Removers • Ian Hunter
• Ill-Shaped Signs Unavoidable and Unmistakable • J.J. Steinfeld
• (untitled) • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff