Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • My Unexpected Demons by Jocko Benoit
  • Leap by Grace Seybold
  • High Road by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
  • In the Uncanny Valley by Joan Wiese Johannes

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Content vs. Intent

I was listening to Jimi Hendrix performing “Hey Joe” and thinking about song lyrics: not necessarily poetry, but the two fields often overlap indistinguishably. Although that particular song has never lost its gut-level appeal for me, I wonder why I like it so much: it can be understood as profoundly misogynistic, given that it’s about a guy who murders his wife for infidelity—and there are many songs, too numerous to name, that I hate specifically because the lyrics offend me.

The very old songs in English, the Childe ballads and others, are often tragic. But they do not, I believe, function as role models for behavior; why do we tend to assume this about contemporary lyrics and be offended by them? Many songs and poems recount narratives that are deeply emotional; true love, false love, murder, war, treachery, and a panoply of lesser agonies. When we hear or read these tales, we experience what we think the people described must have felt; we relive their experiences, real or imaginary, out of the mists of history or from a far-flung future or a fantastic world that never was.

Reading a novel has been described as “trying someone’s life on for size.” Perhaps reading a poem is the act of trying someone’s feelings on for size: experiencing the emotions of a person or entity you might never have envisioned becoming, and finding out—if the poet can draw you in and make you believe—how they felt. Among the poems in this issue are some affecting experiences you won’t encounter anywhere else. Please, try them on one at a time, and see how they fit. I’ll be right back; I’m just going to go slip into “2,000 Light Years from Home.”

Bound for a star with fiery oceans,

—F.J. Bergmann, Star*Line Editor

Side note: the-toast.net/2014/01/03/every-felony-committed-decemberist-albums/

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Editor's Choice Poems

"My Unexpected Demons," by Jocko Benoit

And the exorcist came to rid me of
My unexpected demons. He spilled a cross
Of ashes on my forehead and I retched up
A pair of woman’s eyes that had possessed me
Years ago, alongside a minuscule insult
That crippled the corners of my mouth. Three
Ex-presidents flew gibbering from my maw, followed
By the last-minute home run that foiled the Expos in ’81,
And the final level of Halo 3 which vexed
My nightmares into labyrinths, ending with a
Mushroom cloud and the roll of flames consuming
The desk I was trained to hide beneath.

I spewed opportunities and unspoken desires
Gone to zombies, wraiths, imps and succubae,
And my guardian angel who never let me do
Anything I enjoyed. By now the priest’s eyes
Were bulging, trying to oust with prayer
That last mote in the soul’s true sight,
My muse—she who told me life
Could wait and fed me freshly peeled words.
My rescuer flung holy water, cited
Scripture which my muse lapped up, smiling.
“Now you see, Father, why we had you come,”
We said together. “Without you, it would
All be for nothing.” And my jaw unhinged
So I could swallow him screaming whole.
That is who you see looking through
My eyes now that I’ve come to tell you
What you need to know about change.

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"Leap," by Grace Seybold

Waking is slow. The frozen throat forgets
a pulse once beat inside it. There were dreams
of screaming. Limbs come free. The body seems
to have survived, and I, inside, and yet—
And yet the ship is motionless. We meant
to wake in orbit, seven centuries gone
from Earth, to land and settle. It’s gone wrong;
we’ve stopped far out, dark, cold, our venture spent—
And yet the planet sparkles. Strings of light
mark cities. Signals tell of people near
who, decades past, outracing light, came here
to wait for us on our unneeded flight.
Here where we thought we’d be the first to roam
our children’s children’s children call us home.

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"High Road," by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

boy leaves home or girl
leaves home,
satchel shouldered or scaly partner clinging,
seeking no-cost transport,
some way to get to the big show,
grit-eyed from the draft of a
hundred robotransports before one stops,
ramshackle or shiny;
something leers out,
casts a line as old as runaways,
something that won’t take “I’d rather walk” for no,
that smiles and smiles like they do,
turns off the high way at a little place it knows,
meanwhile, our protagonist, hungry
and thin, thirsty and hot,
has a secret talent/power/fear/shame,
surprise, let’s go with that,
wrong species/rank in the food web/scent
and something rises up to beat on/rape/eat our
hero/ine who, somehow, turns the table over,
setting its young feet/pseudopods/etc
on Destiny’s road …
now THAT’S a good story, tell me that one
again and you’re hired/spared/paid/released/allowed to die.

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"In the Uncanny Valley," by Joan Wiese Johannes

        A term invented by Masahihro Mori, who observed that when roboticists get close to life-like but not close enough, what was endearing quickly becomes repellent.
—National Geographic, August 2011

Actuators raise my android arms; my
biomimetic body responds to my brain. If
conscience really is what makes us human,
do I dare trust mine or should you override the
ethical adapter that enables me to choose, but
forces me to face frontiers with programmed
guilt? A gift, I guess if guilt, too, makes me
human. Still, the horror in your face
indicates that I am a mirror imperfect. “I’m
just a robot,” I’ve been taught to say to
keep at bay your thoughts of killing me. You see,
like you, I want to live, but unlike you,
murder is not on my mind. My
network of neural fibers fears
oblivion, but won’t obey the inner voice that tells me to
push you over the precipice, protect my not-
quite-human self. I observe you as you
rationalize your rage, insist that I’m not real,
see silicon, and eye blinks nanoseconds slow as
technology tempts us in this treacherous terrain, this
Uncanny Valley, universe unknown. Here the
vicious nature of your nature is your vice. You
walk with weapon raised; your willing laser
X-marks the spot where my circuit will break.
Yea, though I walk no more, I reach toward you,
zombie-like hands entreating a-nn-ddd zzzzzzzzzz.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * F.J. Bergmann
• President’s Message • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• All the News
• From the Small Press • Denise Dumars, John Philip Johnson, j. mirio, Alex Plummer Full reviews
• Stealth SF: Unselected Poems • Denise Dumars
• Xenopoetry •  Sofía Rhei, translated by Lawrence Schimel

Art

• In Its Eye • Richard H. Fay
• A ghost in the rue de l’école de médecine • Ivan de Monbrison
• Large view of the Montparnasse graveyard • Ivan de Monbrison
• Old fashioned• Ivan de Monbrison
• untitled • Chris Friend

Poetry

• By the Light of Ancient Suns • David Barber
• Lucky • Anna Sykora
• My Unexpected Demons • Jocko Benoit
• Black Lilies • Stephanie M. Wytovich
• The Time of Last Scattering • Lynette Mejía
• “a butterfly flaps her wings” • Yunsheng Jiang
• Soup or Supper • Wilfredo Guzman
• Hate Snow • Jessy Randall
• Shooting Star • Gary S. Watkins
• Sonnet 65,000,000 BC • Mary A. Turzillo
• Leap • Grace Seybold
• Waiting for the Apocalypse • Chad Hensley
• Dream of the Forge • Alicia Cole
• The Virgin and the Unicorn • Mary Soon Lee
• “after the long sleep” • Eric Otto
• The Combat Simulator in Sleep Mode • Noel Sloboda
• The Patron Saint of Plagiarists • Noel Sloboda
• Arrival Deferred For the Ancient Voyagers • John W. Sexton
• What Isn’t in the News Yet • Marge Simon
• River Bed Discovery, Mars • Les Merton
• “though the princess was beautiful” • Matthew Wilson
• The Hundred Falling Worlds • David Barber
• Paradox • Wilfredo Guzman
• Thrall • Kendall Evans & David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Shoggoth Revolution • Lee Clark Zumpe
• Life for Poets on Other Planets • Richard J. O’Brien
• “a black hole grows” • Fuson
• Bête Blanche • Robert Borski
• “Dreams cost so much” • Matthew Wilson
• Crossed Wires • Claudine Nash
• Time Traveler’s Woe • Beth Cato
• Santa Claus Triptych • Sandra Lindow
• High Road • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Climate Change • Alan Ira Gordon
• Outtakes • Jane Røken
• Infected by the Sentience of the Mutant Rain Forest • Bruce Boston
• Name is the Net • Corinne Gaston
• Three witches walk into a gay bar • Chris Philpot
• Petition to Ban Gershwin • Neal Wilgus
• After Eating Magic Sushi That Made Me Shrink, I Now Live Among the Bacteria Where My Wife, To Us, Is the Goddess of the Harvest • John Arthur
• The Emperor • Joe Nicholas
• Morning Brew • Shannon Connor Winward
• The New Radio • Alicia Cole
• In the Uncanny Valley • Joan Wiese Johannes
• Incubator • Sarah Shirley
• Beasts That Perish • Robert Laughlin
• So’ Tahdi Nidaabaa, A Battle in the Land of Stars • Gary Every
• rest day, in transit to Centauri Prime • Beth Cato
• Ultraloop 66 • Carl Grafe
• Overhead • Holly Day
• Blue Hour • Jonel Abellanosa
• from Beautiful Rush (i) • Marc Vincenz
• “have reached Earth 2” • Lauren McBride
• A Tanka for a Trekkie • William Cullen, Jr.
• I. Notes from a Bradshaw’s Guide • Becca De La Rosa
• Keep the Deviants Satisfied • T. R. Click