Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • Bird, Dog by Isaac Black
  • When the First Ship Left by T.D. Walker
  • Operating Instructions for Mother’s Wardrobe by John W. Sexton
  • “fangs in a glass” by LeRoy Gorman

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Reach out and Touch Someone

First frost already, here; summer’s gone; and a post-equinoctial blood moon has manifested. The dark is rising—and another election season is upon us.

The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

—Archibald MacLeish, “You, Andrew Marvell”

Due to increasing difficulties with e-mail delivery, future Star*Line mailings will now originate from starlineeditor@gmail.com. Google may well be Evil Incarnate, but after changing over we heard from about 50 folks who had not been receiving Star*Line and SFPA e-mails using the previous addresses. Official SFPA announcements will be sent from sfpanews@gmail.com.

We’ve had concerns about membership attrition. In actual numbers, SFPA is growing: the current membership is 273, along with a few Star*Line subscribers (hi, you guys!), but the turnover is greater than ideal. Although comparable to that of other poetry associations, we are relieved that some losses were inadvertent—a number of the expired have rejoined (welcome back!). If nothing else, growing membership (and much-appreciated advertisers) will continue to finance Star*Line’s color covers; beyond that, we hope to increase the payment rate, and enhance and add to the programs SFPA provides.

Introduce your mundane fellow poets, as well as non-poetic friends and acquaintances, to our other-dimensional portal. Offer them fairy fruit. Open the door into the hill and invite them in.

“Aliens are comprehensible, and if they’re not comprehensible now, they eventually will be.”
              —N.K. Jemisin, interviewed by Karen Burnham, Systems Fail

Here’s to the power of our imaginations,

—F.J. Bergmann, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Bird, Dog," by Isaac Black

Consciousness stirred, tickling like horsehair
or fur, reeking like heaped-up shit, waking
my ass up (I think). I couldn’t leave a palm’s
impression or a footprint, I could tell you that much.
My eyes stung. My nose said, Oh, the stink;
disinfectant, please. Where were the larks at
daybreak, my marigolds, the Sound of Music?
Hadn’t I just floated into a choir of colors, Raphaelite-
bright? Wasn’t I supposed to go, as Colette
said, where one does not age? At 67, hadn’t
I said fuck you to Paget’s disease, clogged arteries,
diapers, baby wipes, the b.s. of a Last Will?
I felt like I was wrestling turfs of hair. And what
was whirling over me, chasing itself, stinging
like leather? A gray tail, spiked with lice?
Mus musculus? I took off. Past moldy Wonder
Bread crumbs, orange rinds, a coffee thermos.
I knocked over cameras, boots, crystal figurines—
angels, that baby Jesus. The house owner,
angrier than any Rorschach blot I ever saw,
was chasing me. Left, right, right. I went in
and out of a doll’s museum. I circled squares
of glue, breezed past wire snap-traps. Could
I outrun the devil? The dog? By 10 o’clock
(unable to nose I’M A MAN on any keyboard),
I became a dustball in a crawlspace. Did that
till the fragrance of bars of Dove led me to
peach glass tiles, pastel towels. My Interstate
180 was a broomstick, my amethyst birthstone
was the toilet seat. I saw daylilies, my piano
keys, Cos d’Estournel ’82. If I did the wisest
thing (an axial twisting dive), maybe I could
ante up to advantage. I let out a curdling Thy-
Will-Be-Done wail. Air bubbles and slivers
of black spittle shot out of me as if I were
a smokestack. Maybe I’d go nowhere. Or fly
perpetually … bird, dog, chimpanzee, Man?

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"When the First Ship Left," by T.D. Walker

Others took their places
on widow’s watches.

Instead, I made breakfast,
the habit of bacon and eggs. I won’t

look up to seek that dim red light you
showed me, that evening: our younger selves

full of cider and what passed for affection.
The dog, always yours more than mine,

waits at the door. Twenty years on, when you’ve returned,
our son will speak another language: Mars

as another word for absence. I won’t teach him that
patience is any virtue. I’ll accept

this unraveling, as I promised: my own
waiting a journey as long and as cold

as any planet’s passage.

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"[we still don’t have the energy]," by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Remove key before entering
Place key in pocket
Enter and close door
Do not step into empty shoes as these may dance disobediently once on
Do not eat the mothballs scattered on the floor
Crouch into the dark space between mother’s coats
Remain perfectly still until the coats begin to whisper
Do not enter their conversation at any cost
Try to remember something from their conversation, especially if it puzzles you
Do not give them the key that is in your pocket, no matter what they tell you
Do not answer them back if they ask for it
When opening the door again, check the coats for any of your stray hairs
Under no circumstances leave any stray hairs behind
On leaving, lock the door
No one must know the secret of the wardrobe except you
Tell no one what you heard

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"[fangs in a glass]," by LeRoy Gorman

fangs in a glass
the politician
calls it a day

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * F.J. Bergmann
• President’s Message • Bryan D. Dietrich
• From the Small Press • John Philip Johnson, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Sandra J. Lindow, Diane Severson Mori, Alex Plummer, Steve Tomasko Full reviews
• Stealth SF: Consciousness Squeezed Like Juice • Denise Dumars
• Xenopoetry • The human eats the alien * Ricardo Burgos López, trans. Fred W. Bergmann

Art

• Dead Dragon * Hanes Bach

Poetry

• Srange Journey * Jane Røken
• “alien cruiser” & “rising just under” * Tony Burfield
• Street Sightings * Marge Simon
• Denizen * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• The Universe in Black and White * Joe Nicholas
• First Encounter * Lauren McBride
• “reaching into black holes” * John Reinhart
• Astral Gnome of Doom * Michael Kriesel
• Paranormal Botany * James S. Dorr
• Sez Who? * Neal Wilgus
• Adrift * Lee Clark Zumpe
• Bird, Dog * Isaac Black
• “time travel:” * Matthew Wilson
• Time Traveler’s Séance * Beth Cato
• “artificial reality” * Fuson
• FTL * LeRoy Gorman
• The Apostate * Robert Borski
• Nyarlathotep * Mark Jones
• Thank Hecate for Insurance * Beth Cato
• space traveler * Janet Butler
• Metamorphosis * Lynette Mejía
• time traveler’s last words * LeRoy Gorman
• Moon Protection Factor * Robert Borski
• “lights+off=” * Fuson
• When the First Ship Left * T.D. Walker
• “why can’t I” * Fuson
• The Hundred Dragons of Sumbral * Mary Soon Lee
• “a discount offered” * Fuson
• Unblended Heritage * Robert Borski
• Surreal Bucket List #7 * Bruce Boston
• “tasting rooms …” * Denise Dumars
• Disextinction Day * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Operating Instructions for Mother’s Wardrobe * John W. Sexton
• The Honeymoon * Matthew Wilson
• Heere ther be Gods * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Robo-Infidelity * Robert Borski
• Memory in the Maze * Jason Matthews
• “cyborg surgery” * Sandra J. Lindow
• “new coat of not-here” * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• “‘driverless’ Hummer” * William Cullen, Jr.
• Robot Evolution * Ken Poyner
• A-Affordable Robots * Lauren McBride
• House of Jaguar * Serena Fusek
• Roadkill & Orgy of the Damned * Michael Kriesel
• “election-year surveys” * C. William Hinderliter
• “fangs in a glass” * LeRoy Gorman
• “nine lives times” * Greer Woodward
• “late summer flight” * LeRoy Gorman
• “autumn morning” * Dietmar Tauchner
• “rogue digitizers” * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• “star pilot …” * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• The Deal * Matthew Wilson
• The Vampire Inventor * James S. Dorr
• Final Thoughts of a Companion (Beta) * Anne Carly Abad
• Sailing into the Reflection * Joe Nicholas
• “spaceship” * Lauren McBride
• Prospect * Alessio Zanelli
• “martian greenhouse” * Carolyn M. Hinderliter
• When Life Gives You Lemons … * Alan Ira Gordon
• Selling Off * James Bettendorf
• “public toilet:” * Matthew Wilson
• Trapdoors in the Multiverse * Cornelius Fortune
• Celestial Choreography * Terry A. Garey
• Talent Show * Matthew Wilson
• Pink Unicorns * Robert Borski
• Frosty the Golem * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• “sunrise” * LeRoy Gorman
• More Tea or I’ll Appear * Ian Hunter
• Since you’re asking * Mark Danowsky
• “after an interstellar gale” * Yunsheng Jiang
• From Grandma, with Love * Beth Cato
• grateful children * Herb Kauderer
• Tonight We Wear the Constellations * Liana Kapelke-Dale