Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • Oregon 2112 by Harvey J. Baine
  • Interpose: A Love Poem by Scott T. Hutchison
  • Fungal Singularity by Holly Jensen
  • After Oz by C. W. Johnson

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Quality Control

The sharp-eyed Reader may notice an unusual abundance of advertisements from other speculative poetry venues. This is a Good Thing! Not only does it mean that our lovely color covers will be possible for a few more issues, but it celebrates the coming of the annual Rhysling Awards and presents many other discerning publications in which nominated poems have appeared.

A regrettably small number of SFPA members (less than a quarter of our membership) avail themselves of the opportunity to nominate poems—and even fewer bother to nominate long poems. The number who actually vote for the Rhysling each year is even smaller. Conversely, the numbers of both nominators and voters have been rising steadily despite a slight decline in total membership—and the number of publications upon which those nominations draw has increased much more dramatically: 34 in 2011, 48 in 2012, and 55 this year. This is very encouraging: if the statistics are to be believed, members are both participating more and reading—or finding speculative poetry that pleases them—in a wider range of publications. Many of which have advertised herein; we encourage you, dear Reader, to support them in turn.

There’s been a recent discussion of gender bias (again) in publishing, where males continue to dominate in most venues. As is typical, Star*Line receives twice as many submissions from those with male names as those with female names—since nearly all are via e-mail (except for prisoners, who are not only welcome to submit via postal mail, but need not furnish an SASE), I’m guessing here. I was somewhat disconcerted to realize that unlike Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, another journal for which I am the poetry editor, Star*Line has recently accepted a disproportionately higher number of submissions from men. This is, perhaps, offset by the fact that the reverse holds true for Star*Line’s annual award nominations even more disproportionately. Or perhaps it is not. From a poem in Mobius:

I have never said Please, treat the people I love like they are disposable or It’s okay to call her that name or I’ll let this slide the first hundred times but my silence said it for me.

      —Miles Walser, “Negative Space”

I’d like to make clear that whatever gender ratio manifests in these pages is not a matter of deliberate policy nor, I hope, a matter of unconscious animus. Unlike many other journals whose rejection letters invariably include the phrase “We receive many more wonderful poems than we can publish,” Star*Line does not receive as many excellent submissions as I would like—or could make space for. I actively work to counteract this status by frequently urging other poets to submit, not only via personal contact, but by posts on websites, listservs, and blogs.

Reader, consider submitting if you are not already doing so. Invite other poets to submit; invite your friends—hell, invite your enemies. And perhaps in doing so you will find common ground. The poet Tracy K. Smith has said “Poetry is a wonderful tool for understanding and changing the way you look at the world,” and she was speaking about writing poetry, not only reading it.

Elsewhere* I have said that science-fiction poetry is a subset of poetry, but that is not really true. Non-speculative poetry is actually only a small island floating in the Sea of the Imagination, dwarfed by the splendid waves of that alien ocean and menaced by the fantastic creatures that swim beneath it. It is the quality and content of what’s imagined that changes how we think and, as a result, how we exist. Of course the future approaches inexorably, whether we imagine it or not, but it is important to remember that how we imagine that future is capable of transforming it.

What I love shall come like visitant of air …

      —Emily Brontë, “The Visionary”

Join me in the future, where all the cool life-forms hang out.

—F.J. Bergmann, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Oregon 2112," by Harvey J. Baine

The air has been smoke
for years.

Children play
ring around a dead tree,
in colorful head-scarves,
red and white, blue and white,
purple, green and gold
and red as blood melons.
Their feet are the color
of soft earth.
They run and sing
holding laughter in
grubby hands.

A witch snatches them,
catches them
in her cloak
and takes them home
to make bacon.
The sun goes down radish-red
in the evening.
Two Humvees are cresting
the hill.

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"Interpose: A Love Poem," by Scott T. Hutchison

If Death’s cowled presumption were ever to enter your wing-whispering room
I will be iron gate and waiting. If he dares reach brittle finger bone
toward you, he will meet a resistance of glint and roar beyond his
ancient ken and dominion. He will not pass, for I have supped full
of flesh-scratching fears from my own making, the less of me
confronting the dirt and sandbox, the spitball years of school yard,
the narrowing of parents behind their newspapers and curtains,
two bruised feet of my own for blind stumbling, until you
were balm and oil and voice to soothe those winces and abidings
hiding behind the frail rust of human hinge—what is his reach
to me, who has kissed hatred full on the mouth,
lessoned in lowering others to the bottom of goldless wishing wells,
unjusted for crimes I did not commit while rat-gliding
along the grey wall of unaccused transgressions, finally
mirrored with only one face to smash and blame—lost and angry
until you gently entered, stood within the frame smoothing graven lines
into submission, your kiss opiating all history into forgiveness.
Let him bring his embrace of cold dark endlessness into your room,
his pitiful dreams of unfurling and dust, and I will begin
a war that shakes the rough edges of all expanding matter
and star fabric, all light, all atoms, all invisible and eternal god scream—
let him know: I have grasped the flaming sword from the door
of Paradise, laughed through cleansing and the forge, and I will cleave
all worlds asunder if he even thinks your name.

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"Fungal Singularity," by Holly Jensen

The fungal singularity
blooms a shade of violet we
cannot comprehend yet.
Armillaria ostoyae,
the Dark Honey of Oregon,
spreads doublespeed, pours across
the Blue Mountains. From outer space,
it looks as though the continent’s
fontanel is, at last, sealing.

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"After Oz," by C. W. Johnson

My body no longer rises into the air like a buoyant
balloon I cannot control. Over the past ten years
I have slowly folded into an pear-shaped old man,
my rusted fingers no longer nimble at card tricks.
The only green in this gray Nebraska town
comes from emerald mobs of corn alongside
highways the color and texture of crocodile backs.

One day the tin bell in my curio shop dingled.
Shadowed in the doorway stood Dorothy,
a grown woman now, tall, with her breasts filled out.
I could tell despite the heavy coat she wore.
Behind the curtain of my muddy flesh I hid.
She tugged at the black gloves on her hands,
not looking at my face. In the silence, each tick
of the clock screwed tighter the brass vise on my brain.

Do they know about you? Her words spun my stomach
like a dishwater cyclone. I said, “I haven’t—.”
Do you stay away from little girls? My tongue wriggled
thick as a thumb, useless as a charred broomstick.
She said, No one believed me. Just a fanciful tale.
My uncle whipped me for lying and sent me to bed
without supper. The gloves came off, and I saw her hands,
porcelain white, the way I knew her body to be,
her shoulders, her thighs, her belly sleek as a cat.
The old monkey-whispers licked my skin
like flames on straw, the desert sun burned my face.
As she walked away each click of her red heels
battered my limbs like an axe-blade in the forest,
and grief fell on my body heavy as a house.

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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 • Susan Gabrielle, Joshua Gage, John Garrison, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Wendy Rathbone, Terrie Leigh Relf, Bryan Thao Worra Full reviews
• Xenopoetry • Esteban Moscarda; translation by Fred W. Bergmann

Art

• The Forest • Dina Djabieva
• Onward Light Traveler • Denny E. Marshall
• Nessiterix Attacks an Elephoid • Richard H. Fay
• Aves • Dina Djabieva
• Wheel of Time • Dina Djabieva
• Desert of the Spiral Tower • Denny E. Marshall
• Close-Up Encounters • Denny E. Marshall

Poetry

• “Transmuter backed up” • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• I’m the Stone You Can Squeeze Blood from • Sarah Terry
• Making Amends • Jason Sturner
• Black Sabbath Sestina • Wade German
• Don’t Think There’s Nothing to Fear • Kurt MacPhearson
• Moon Jim Skinhead • John W. Sexton
• “relearning farming” • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• New and Improved • David Dickinson
• Mississippi Twilight • Chad Hensley
• “green thumb” • LeRoy Gorman
• My Blind Desire for the Fleeting • Robert Frazier
• General Curse against One Who Has Tried to Harm You • Margaret Benbow
• Ifrit • Jason Matthews
• Oregon 2112 • Harvey J. Baine
• Superiority Is Relative • Robert Laughlin
• Terran delegation • Lauren McBride
• Workshop • Lenore McComas Coberley
• Our Hearts Cried Out • Alicia Cole
• Who’s for Dinner • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Interpose: A Love Poem • Scott T. Hutchison
• His Majesty • Justin Hamm
• Advice from the future • Damien Cowger
• Famers • Vincent Miskell
• “game for the outer world cup” • LeRoy Gorman
• Towers of Light • Ann K. Schwader
• In Monster Years, I’m Old • Lauren McBride
• “the dogs go quack” • Kim L. Neidigh
• The Truth about Fairies • Beth Cato
• Old Fashions • Neal Wilgus
• Keeping Company • Jarod K. Anderson
• The City on the Hill • Jeanie Tomasko
• Fungal Singularity • Holly Jensen
• Hands, Discovered Independent of Body • Justin Hamm
• Just the Way It Is • Tim Laffey
• “she doesn’t like” • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Wormhole • Alan Meyrowitz
• Pallid Bone Telemetries • Marc Dorpema
• Mad Scientists • Chris Bullard
• Father Is Never Coming Home • Jeffrey Johannes
• Wire Mother • Jason Matthews
• A Questionable Immortality • Bruce Boston
• Special Delivery from the Unnamed Quadrant • Jason Matthews
• “offworld trade fair” • Carolyn M. Hinderliter
• Lusus Naturae • Albert W. Grohmann
• The Bed I Haven’t Made • Peg Duthie
• After Oz • C. W. Johnson
• warriors lament • Anna Sykora
• Pinocchio in the Toothpick Factory • Andrew Kozma
• Boa Boy Sends His Regrets • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Mayflies • Glenn Meisenheimer