Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes • F.J. Bergmann

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • New Planet Landscape 12 by Ken Poyner
  • Make Believe by Zella Christensen
  • Overheard At The Timeport by David Barber
  • Ivory-Billed Ghosts by Gary Every
  • There Is No Why by Lynette Mejía

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: The Dark Is Falling

Dear Phantasists,

At this season, the editorial pendulum swings further toward horror poetry, which feels more pervasive in everyday life, perhaps because its fears can seem so much more first-hand, so much closer to our reality, than those of fantasy or science fiction.

A couple of years ago, my husband stopped for coffee somewhere near Milwaukee, WI. As is typical of a certain kind of shop, he was never able to remember its name or find it again. On its walls, someone named Julie was exhibiting a series of erasure poems—painted-out pages from books or magazines—inserted in cheap little frames, on sale for $5. This is one of them.

                       you are
          waiting
          to
                       chew on my bones

                       nobody is big enough

          to keep it from
          happening

Please vote in favor of the proposed increases to SFPA print memberships rates (our only expenses other than printing and mailing publications are webhosting, contributor/contest payments, and award plaques). Thanks to those Life members who have waived print publications or extra copies and to very generous anonymous donors (2 more color covers!). We’d also like to thank Written Image Press for their donation to the Dwarf Stars anthology.

We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

—John Buchan, poet, novelist, and politician (1875–1940)

Onward, into the black night of space.

—F.J. Bergmann, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"New Planet Landscape 12," by Ken Poyner

You emerge one morning
And find yourself looking
At you. The planet
Has made a perfect copy of you.
It has seen and felt and tasted
Enough of you to synthesize
Your double. It has
Your habits, your vices. Horrified,
You will absolutely need to rotate to new duty.
At least one of you will need to rotate.

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"Make Believe," by Zella Christensen

that every day you’ve waited for your prince
is worth the dragon, worth the frog’s wet kiss.
Make believe the wide world’s still intact
and princes still ride out in search of their Miss
Charmings. If you can believe
that in a castle you will never leave
your destiny awaits, then you have faith
like fallout. If you think
the bridge across your moat will never sink
beneath a heat like suns, you are a fool.
If you can believe in answered prayers, you
who never yet stepped down the winding stairs
that lead to your front door, turn toward the bare
and silent plain outside your turret fair;
at the window in your cell, wait on.
Now, let down your glowing hair.

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"Overheard At The Timeport," by David Barber

That these travellers from exotic times as yet unnamed,
(the Age of Brains perhaps, or the Red Years)
stopped off merely for reasons of entropy

never occurred to us as they surfaced, blinking,
into the heat and humidity of the Cape,
unmoved by our official welcomes

while stonily awaiting their connection;
unless what we offered was like a bar
beside some jungle airstrip selling hooch

across planks atop two oil-drums;
our squabbles dull compared to Ragnaroks
to come; our arts much like the doldrums

of this remote timeport, somewhen between
the dinosaurs and the sun ripening
like a plum. But there was one

from far uptime whose ethics sieve
no longer cared who overheard
how in the histories of the future

we are known only for a nameless guilt,
the stink of which pervades our age, shamed
by something we did, or are about to.

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"Ivory-Billed Ghosts," by Gary Every

Ivory-billed woodpeckers have learned to harvest water
as a conduit for time travel.
This is why they only appear in the rain.

When the rain falls upon their outstretched black and white wings
ivory-billed woodpeckers can glide into the light
coasting between the prismatic rainbows
shining through each and every raindrop,
disappearing in a blinding flash
and reappearing in the same storm in the same forest
but in a different time.
The woodpeckers are following the geographic memories of water
riding timelines of centuries, millennia and more,
surfing storms as they drop from the clouds,
riding the rain to appear in another when.

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"There Is No Why," by Lynette Mejía

One day they’ll tell a fairy tale about me, the girl with one arm and a pinkish heart full of love. Perhaps something with forest animals, doting parents, bird seed, bread crumbs, lost chicks returned with quiet grace to long-abandoned nests. They’ll know me by the shape of my memory, my flawless skin, or maybe my name, my true name, not some razzle-dazzle pseudonym someone made up for the story.

The road to town is hot asphalt, a track through the woods covered in thick, black tar. I sink up to my ankles but keep walking anyway, leaving deep black footprints oozing longing in my wake. Nary a breeze blows over this, the part of the story wherein our heroine faces obstacles. Surrounded by fairy godmothers, dragonflies, and yelloweyed wolves staring from behind the trees beyond the road. Where is your grandmother, they growl. Where is she.

The shadows are growing like fattened calves by the time I make it there, the trailer park mud-encrusted and grandmother/godmother nowhere to be found amid aluminum windows and sagging, coathanger antennas. The wolves are bolder now, throwing rocks, sniffing, pissing on tires, watching with hungry eyes the baby birds dropping dead with fear like stones to the ground. No quarter, the bees whisper, clinging to the undersides of leaves. There’s no quarter here.

Sun goes down and the honkytonk across the road blinks, bewildered. How did I get here I ask the darkness, but nobody seems to know—or if they do, they’re not telling. The highway is cooler now but louder, too, asphalt speaking tongues, clattering, clanging bells that interrupt the flow of the narrative. No better idea, I’ll drink with the wolves, I say, eat my flesh raw as nature intended and in the dawn I’ll find my way, if I can, back along another road.

Inside, grandmother tends the bar, serving pork rinds pulled from blown-down porcine houses. Wolves line the walls like trophies, stacked like firewood, and I realize I’ve held onto the basket all this time. It feels light, a small thing in my hand my fist wraps around, sweaty but willing. Break our fast, the wolves whisper. What’s in the basket.

What’s in the basket. He comes at me, and the knife is not a huntsman’s axe because those are for forest trees. I slit his belly open and out fall kids, bonnets, assorted baked goods and rocks of various sizes. Grandmother grins and pours another drink. The knife is slick in my hand, slick as egg yolks and bird shit, slick as snot. It comes alive and I think that’s how they’ll find me—not a trail of bread crumbs or clever names, but one of bright red drops turned rusty in the sun. My fairy tale is not your fairy tale but that’s all right. I’ll cut you belly to balls, I say, to no one in particular. Belly to balls.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * F.J. Bergmann
• President’s Message • Bryan D. Dietrich
• SFPA Announcements
• From the Small Press • Joshua Gage, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Sandra J. Lindow, Alex Plummer Full reviews
• Publishing Speculative Poetry * Jessy Lets It All Hang Out * Jessy Randall
• On Judging and Being Judged * Lesley Wheeler

Art

• Drops from Above ~ Denny E. Marshall

Poetry

• Best Friends * Marge Simon
• “moonbase autumn” * Deborah P Kolodji
• His Heart on His Sleeve * Robert Borski
• staring at a pumpkin” * James D. Fuson
• New Planet Landscape 5 * Ken Poyner
• “scares even zombies” * Steven Wittenberg Gordon
• Lover * Soren James
• rebooting * John Reinhart
• “Blue Spider Grill” * Greer Woodward
• “regrets” * Thomas Tilton
• “dead reckoning” * Dave Dickinson
• “partial eclipse of the moon” * Yunsheng Jiang
• The Washerwoman’s Daughter * Mary Soon Lee
• “tentacles every which way” * LeRoy Gorman
• Customer Service * Eric Burke
• The Dreaming System Must Awake * Robin Wyatt Dunn
• “in space nobody” * Joe Nicholas
• “origami robot” * Earl Cooley III
• The Universe * Soren James
• Why You Will Listen and Drown * Beth Cato
• a natural death * Herb Kauderer
• “nothing to say” * LeRoy Gorman
• “idols of my youth” * Roman Lyakhovetsky
• New Planet Landscape 12 * Ken Poyner
• “how to make demons” * Jason Kirk
• Cosmology of Rocking Chairs … * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• White hole * Christiaan Sabatelli
• “FYI: A.I.” * Jason Kirk
• Make Believe * Zella Christensen
• “psychic mushrooms” * Ross Balcom
• Picture This … * Alan Katerinsky
• Day Planner * Matthew Wilson
• “Race to the end” * Elizabeth Bennefeld
• Pleistocene Park … * Mark Danowsky
• In the Wake of Solar System … * Mark Arvid White
• An Apology * Christina Sng
• Concepts * Christina Sng
• Probability * Glenn A. Meisenheimer
• Ghosts of Cimmeria * Wade German
• 11th Choice * Herb Kauderer
• Attack of The Saurus * John Reinhart
• Alien Evolution * Jennifer Ruth Jackson
• Host * Brian Garrison
• “vacuum cleaner for sale” * John Reinhart
• Kardash * Glenn A. Meisenheimer
• “the cosmic dancefloor” * C.R. Harper
• “closed bathroom” * John Reinhart
• Overheard At The Timeport * David Barber
• “lab in the cellar” * Roman Lyakhovetsky
• Death of a Dome City * Bruce Boston
• “robo-unicorn” * Ross Balcom
• Cave of Tayos * Eric Burke
• “Copy of Flatland” * G. O. Clark
• Vengeance * Mary Soon Lee
• luddite’s dream * Herb Kauderer
• After Alice in Wonderland * Kris Rhodes
• The Music of Angels * Bruce Boston
• The Witch-Box * Jennifer A. McGowan
• Monster * Weronika Łaszkiewicz
• “another alien intervention” * ayaz daryl nielsen
• Galaxy Destroyer * Glenn A. Meisenheimer
• Ivory-Billed Ghosts * Gary Every
• Tainting Ceres * Jon Olsen
• “boxes of old lightning” * N.E. Taylor
• The Confluence * Christina Sng
• GMOs * John Reinhart
• For Nothing Would I Trade * Carrie Cuinn
• Lately I’ve Been Thinking … * Israel Wasserstein
• “one sex was not …” * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Hard Being A God * David Barber
• Formicidae martis * Dusty Wallace
• The Mutant Rain Forest Goes Commercial * Robert Frazier
• Whales in Space * Zella Christensen
• Grace Notes * Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• Guardian Angel * Joshua Gage
• “moonrise” * Herb Kauderer
• Holographic * Laurin DeChae
• Silver Bullets and the Rest * Ian Hunter
• There Is No Why * Lynette Mejía
• Early Dystopia * Denise Clemons
• Living Forever * Lela E. Buis
• Don’t you just hate it when … * Raoul Izzard
• Tidal Forces * Eric Burke