Online Issue Contents

• Dragons & Rayguns

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • Vader Redux by Bruce Niedt
  • off-Off-Broadway by Brittany Hause
  • Fox Mulder Retires by Michael Kriesel
  • Pinocchio Plays the Cotton Club by Alan Ira Gordon
  • How to Repair Starships by Mary Soon Lee
  • On Lost Cultures—Report 197 A by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

• Full Table of Contents

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Dragons & Rayguns

Greetings, specpo friends! We’re highlighting this time light poetry, sometimes disparaged in “serious” poetry circles. Balderdash! Look for a Shuggoth here. As we’ve done all this 40th Anniversary year, our cover artist Virgil Suarez is also a poet; through his work, we honor Hispanic American Heritage Month: he is a Cuban American writer, artist, and luthier. Enjoy! Laugh! And look thou for the Shuggoth!

—Vince Gotera, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Vader Redux," by Bruce Niedt

They all hate me, that Rebel Alliance,
those troublemakers in their X-wing fighters.
They don’t want me to build the Death Star,
my greatest idea. It’s huge, the size of a moon,
a deterrent, a barrier, a wall if you will,
against alien insurgents, rapists and murderers.
I mean, what’s the point of a Death Star
If you can’t use it? I can’t think of a better way
to get rid of all those shithole planets.
They hate my storm troopers too—
good people, just misunderstood.
I want a parade with the greatest show of force
this galaxy has ever seen. They’ll all salute me.
I know more than the generals anyway.
Maybe I didn’t have a chance to play
galactic war with action figures as a kid.
Maybe my dad didn’t give me enough attention,
and when he did, he criticized me without mercy.
But none of that matters now. I’m at the top
of the heap. They all fear my imposing presence—
the mask, the black cloak, the full head of hair.
I can choke any of them with a single thought,
and my lightsaber is the biggest, in my really huge hands.
That lyin’ Kenobi learned the hard way.
Just you wait—I’ll Make the Empire Great Again!

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"off-Off-Broadway," by Brittany Hause

at .2g
Lear’s 3D-printed crown
requires bobby pins

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"Fox Mulder Retires," by Michael Kriesel

The wise remain invisible as aliens.
My face goes blank as snow,
knowing the truth is worse than a lie,
a forest of trees we can’t see.

My face goes numb as snow falls,
a gradual avalanche of white lies
in a forest of white trees, until I’m snowblind.
You can have my share of the truth,

buried in an avalanche of FOIA documents.
When Roswell crashed on Truman’s desk,
he knew he couldn’t share the truth.
The planet was still numb from World War Two.

When aliens crashed in Roswell, New Mexico,
the world was busy trying to recover,
still numb from the atomic bomb we dropped.
Decades drop like sunsets in my rearview.

The world recovers through conspiracies.
Wise aliens remain invisible as theories
while decades drop bombs in my rearview.
The truth? Truth is the worst lie I know.

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"Pinocchio Plays the Cotton Club," by Alan Ira Gordon

So how can I be real, Pops?
he asks the puppet maker.
Joe Petto exhales a long reefer
stream while reaching under
his workbench for the velvet-lined
case. Removing the gleaming brass
trumpet, he flexes the valves
and places the instrument
between the dark mahogany
fingers of his carved-son.

It won’t come soon and it won’t
be easy, he tells the wooden lad.
But with time and effort,
and hard work mixed-in
with a splinter or two,
you can reach the real, taste
it and maybe even become it.

13 Years Later:
After 2:00 a.m. only the diehards
are still in the club;
onstage he’s fronting his back-up
of broken toy jazzy dreamers.
He leads them through some
Coltrane, then lifts into Miles Davis
followed by a run of Marsalis.

Without warning, he drops the room
into uncharted waters with
his own piece: as his solo
climbs higher and higher, even
the club’s smoke stands still
to watch and appreciate and begin
to fall in love.

He’s not there yet, not completely,
but getting oh so closer, near
enough to feel it rising in
his darkwood fingers, hear it
in his ears and sense it in his soul.
He’s confident now that he’ll taste
it and become one with it, still
as wooden a figure as the day
he was built, but now just as real as
the journey and the moment
and the sound.

For my father, Malcolm Gordon

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"How to Repair Starships," by Mary Soon Lee

Hyperdimensional hammer.
Instruction manual.
Software patch.
Duct tape.

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"On Lost Cultures—Report 197 A," by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff

Our scholars,
consulting records found
in sacred, climate-controlled vaults,
scribed in ink of varied colors
on scrolls of butchered tree flesh,
have determined that
the gods of this world’s men
(and anthropomorphic turtles)
responded only to
the heartfelt invocation,
“Cowabunga, Dude!”

Sacrifices of round,
well-segmented foodstuffs
were also strongly recommended.
See appendix b.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Dragons & Rayguns * Vince Gotera
• President’s Message * Bryan Thao Worra
• From the Small Press • Hayley Stone • Herb Kauderer • Vince Gotera
• Stealth SF: No Reservations • Denise Dumars
• XenoPoetry: Japanese Scifaiku: Five Selections • Hiroyasu Amase (translated by Natsumi Ando)

Art

• Dreams of Flight • Christina Sng
• Snake Hunter • Jack Foo
• Castles Majestic • Marge Simon
• Preparing to Fly • Christina Sng
• Cat World • Christina Sng

Poetry

• Vader Redux • Bruce Niedt
• [upon reflection] • Greer Woodward
• The Digital Portrait of Dorian Gray • Robert Borski
• Green Planet • Brittany Hause
• they’ll use Cesar Millan as translator • John Reinhart
• The Guardian at the Gated Tower • Mindy Watson
• [aliens erase] • Denny E. Marshall
• leopard and cubs • Brittany Hause
• If a Dolphin Had Digits • Richard Stevenson
• The Weight • Gretchen Tessmer
• stigma • Brittany Hause
• [outer darkness haiku] • Kendall Evans
• The Whitman Quantum • John Richard Trtek
• Deep • Kim Whysall-Hammond
• [witness relocation] • LeRoy Gorman
• [another atom] • Michelle Muenzler
• [on each lunar peak] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• the odd couple: fermions and bosons • D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• Castles Majestic • Marge Simon
• missing Picasso • Kath Abela Wilson
• port of call • Brittany Hause
• Danger! Danger! • Neal Wilgus
• What Big Teeth • Hayley Stone
• [we must have been blind] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• What She Learned • James Dorr
• A Solution to the Fermi Paradox • David Barber
• [nature walk—] • Susan Burch
• Fallling from One Dimension to Another • J. J. Steinfeld
• Dispersal • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• A Shuggoth Approaches through an Antarctic Blizzard whilst an Intrepid Explorer, Snowblind, Trudges Unfalteringly Onward • F. J. Bergmann
• [particles collide] • D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• Our Minds are Jewels of Uncertainty • Terrie Leigh Relf & Kendall Evans
• [amplituhedron] • D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• Mars Colony • Christina Sng
• [sky dancing] • Stewart C Baker
• off-Off-Broadway • Brittany Hause
• How to Speak to Ghosts • Mary Soon Lee
• structural damage • Herb Kauderer
• [supersymmetry] • D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• dividing up • Susan Burch
• Social Media Haiku: @STcritic • T. R. Jones
• Inception • WC Roberts
• [tentacles] • LeRoy Gorman
• E for Effort • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Imperfect Mutations • Meg Smith
• The Landing Fleet • Matthew Wilson
• Fear, Fear not • Russell Hemmell
• [killing us with kindness?] • Susan Burch
• [infinity—] • Stewart C Baker
• I’m Going to Make You Love Me • Kathleen A. Lawrence
• Ingress • crystalwizard
• Fox Mulder Retires • Michael Kriesel
• [the battle lost] • Greer Woodward
• Frankenfish • Richard Stevenson
• [back to square one] • Susan Burch
• [hunger moon casino] • Greer Woodward
• [first contact] • Denny E. Marshall
• [left behind] • Stewart C Baker
• Bait & Switch • Robert Borski
• Three, Two, Run • Neil Wilgus
• Elegy for the Midden Wife • Amelia Gorman
• [missing dance partners] • D. A. Xiaolin Spires
• Lost Adventurers • Matthew Wilson
• Junk DNA • Mary Soon Lee
• Pinocchio Plays the Cotton Club • Alan Ira Gordon
• Submission Pile • Matthew Wilson
• [steelhorse cowboy haiku] • Kendall Evans
• News Update • Herb Kauderer
• Night Is the Day of the Moon • Gary Every
• [trying on a used] • F. J. Bergmann
• How to Repair Starships • Mary Soon Lee
• Mirror Cats • Mary Soon Lee
• Neolithic Cats of Stonehenge • Mary Soon Lee
• Titania at the End of Time • Mary Turzillo
• [celebrity cooking] • LeRoy Gorman
• To a Changeling Lover • Robert Frazier
• [mossy cliff face—] • Stewart C Baker
• [the floor is lava] • Michelle Muenzler
• If I Could Only Remember My Domain • Robert Frazier
• On Lost Cultures—Report 197 A • Marcie Lynn Tentchoff