Online Issue Contents

• Dragons & Rayguns

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • Buy Local by Matt Weber
  • Friggin’ Aliens by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
  • An Ideal Husband by David Barber
  • Heliobacterium daphnephilum by Rebecca Buchanan
  • Telchine by Jeff Crandall

• Full Table of Contents

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Dragons & Rayguns

Hello, friends in speculative poetry! Hmm. Remember when we used to be rather sparing of exclamation points? But now they crop up everywhere! Not being curmudgeonly, I actually rather like the excitement of the exclamation point’s fist-pumping stance!

In this issue I’m serving up a smorgasbord of light poetry. I’ve always thought that we in poetry can sometimes be too darn serious. Let’s have fun, like the party-hearty exclamation point! In this Star*Line you’ll find tourist T-shirts where you least expect them, the Big Bad Wolf holding forth, Barbie and Ken not holding forth, as well as a certain leader holding forth on the Moon and Mars. Speaking of Mars, how would housekeeping go? Whatever happened to the dinosaurs? What about cryptids? And giant squid at beach parties (see our cover). Remember before Apollo 11 (which is having its 50th) when the moon was made of something other than rock? All of that and more in this issue! Lots of “oops” poems, lots of irony, lots of snark. And of course just a few of those serious poems. You know.

I hope you enjoy this episode of Star*Line! Allons-y!

—Vince Gotera, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Buy Local," by Matt Weber

Heirloom tomatoes—they don’t travel. Swiss
chard, muskier and more bitter than
varieties on offer from the replicator.
Fresh crusty bread baked hours ago. Microbes
hand-engineered to alter the pH
of valley soil for strawberries. Wind chimes
and lawn sculptures cut from the weary steel
of the old spaceport, embellished with blown glass
re-melted from windows that once weathered vacuum.
Vanilla-scented candles, dipped in the wax
of his segmented body by a chandler
with roots here deeper than most humans’. Tiny
dinosaurs, bright-feathered, fresh-exhumed
from genes inferred from bones that settled here
between the first extinction and the third.
Custom entheogens, tuned to the sonic
and chromatic spectra of the heathered field
where new minds first visited the village—
designed to reproduce the thrill of learning
that there are new conversations to be had.
Didactics to instruct the eager brain
on quiddities of gardening for the region—how
to fend off pests, to damp the ill effects
of radiation from the spars of ships
thrown down the gravity well in the skirmish
locals call “the fireworks back then,”
to program a guard drone to stalk and shoot
the “jackalopes” as big as direwolves
that spirit away radishes and babies.
And bitter melon from the Chinese farm
that has been here for centuries—almost
as long as those red migrants spirited
away from their red ziggurats, their calendars
of stone, their breeders’ slaughter—the tomatoes.

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"Friggin’ Aliens," by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

They keep comin’ here
With their unnatural sexes
Disgusting offspring
Stinky food
And take our jobs
Live high on the hog
While honest god-fearin’ humans
Go without.

Right there
Used to be Big Don’s Roadhouse
Just about the best food around
Some hairy things from
Beetlejuice or Centori or some such
Bought the place with their
Wads of glowing foreign money
Turned it into some kind of
Alien eatery
All kind of colored shifting lights
Chimney belchin’
Fumes like to choke a hog
Blighted a row of beautiful old tulip trees.

Them critters
Wobblin’ and oozin’ down the street
Blockin’ the sidewalk
Takin’ the best parking places
And Billy Joe went in there
Two three days ago
Give them a piece of his mind
Ain’t seen him since
But we’re fixin’ to rush the place
Break some wobbly alien heads
Make them pay.

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"An Ideal Husband," by David Barber

My good lady and I love nothing more
than the theatre, Oscar Wilde being
a particular favourite of mine.

During the interval I watch a chap
stroke the plump back of a woman I take
to be his wife until he turns around.

Easy to spot, because jirt can’t do hair.
The starving, slime-skinned amphibians
that poured out of that giant ship of theirs,

were so grateful and eager to fit in
they set about changing, each new brood
less and less like newts and more like us;

willing to clean and cook and change nappies
just for a home. It was that attitude
to hard work swayed my vote for them to stay.

This sleek fellow is one of their latest,
good with kids, easy-tempered, biddable,
brimming with admiration for our women.

Now having proved so useful, they even
chaperone a wife to the theatre,
while her husband is working late perhaps.

Our eyes meet. The jirt smiles, almost a smirk,
its long, supple tongue flicking in and out.
The house lights dim, the next act beginning.

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"Heliobacterium daphnephilum," by Rebecca Buchanan

First, you must understand
that it is too late.

Second, understand that we volunteered.
We knew what we were doing,
what would become of us in the end.

What would become of you.

That was the whole point.

The bacterium was very carefully designed.
We worked on it in secret
for years. Decades.

We planned this very carefully.
Board a flight in New York,
another in Shanghai, Sao Paolo, Sydney.
A sneeze. A cough. Who would notice?

We estimate a sixty percent infection rate.
So, about five billion.
More than enough.

The bacterium is highly adaptable.
Pollen and spores and seeds
fill the air around us; the dirt; our food.
The bacterium will find one—
maybe an oak or a sequoia,
a kapok or bonsai—
take its dna, and
make it yours.

Ours.

When your blood
begins to turn green,
go outside.
If you stay inside—
trapped by walls and floors
of plaster and linoleum
and plastic—
you will die.

Find a nice spot,
one with good soil
and plenty of sun.
Take off your shoes and clothes,
if you want,
but it really won’t matter.
The roots will find their way.

Lift your arms.
Turn up your face.
If you huddle and hide,
you will starve.
Forget about your stock portfolio,
your mortgage, your job,
traffic, email, bills.
They don’t matter,
not anymore.

All that matters
is sun and sky
and water and earth.

Five billion new trees.

More than enough.

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"Telchine," by Jeff Crandall

Don’t call us demons. Below the waist
we’re all snake, it’s true, and fish eyes
stare from our human faces. Remember:
we invented metallurgy,
reared Poseidon to rule the seas,
taught you humans how to capture God’s
image in the hard, veined muscle of marble.

For all our gifts, the people of Rhodes
spat. When we refused
to entertain them with our magic,
they called us queer and the bashings began.

How easy to stone their crops with hail,
poison their fields with water from the Styx.
Who needs wheat when you can eat from the sea?
But Zeus got pissed. We don’t know why

his thunderbolts hurled us into the abyss.
We’re still here—beneath the seafloor, hidden
among diatom shells and black mud, more numerous
than you know, growing in wonder,
resentment and anger. Do not be surprised, you righteous,
the day we arise, taking back by grace
or force our rightful place in your world.

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Dragons & Rayguns * Vince Gotera
• SFPA Announcements
• President’s Message * Bryan Thao Worra
• From the Small Press • Sandra Lindow
• Stealth SF: Welcome to Holland• Denise Dumars
• XenoPoetry: Spanish Speculative Poetry; Saasbeim’s Journeys / Los viajes de Saasbeim • Vicente Luis Mora (translated by Lawrence Schimel)

Art

• Monster Behind the Door • Jade Foo
• Tooth Teeth • Denny E. Marshall
• Drink of the Gods • Marge Simon
• Monster Taxi • Jack Foo

Poetry

• When My Mother Walked On Titan • Alan Ira Gordon
• Editing Girls • Ann K. Schwader
• Eat • Gerri Leen
• Lift Off • Matthew Wilson
• Lunar Home Run Derby • T. R. Jones
• [The fish are all gone] • Debby Feo
• Chores • Lisa Timpf
• If the Moon Was a Part of Mars … • Harris Coverley
• We Wish You Luck • Lisa Timpf
• [earlobes graze the grass] • Karl Lykken
• [thousands of] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• My New Companion Is an Android • John Grey
• Claiming the Moon for Switzerland • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Lupus fibonaccus tripartitus • Robert Borski
• Enemy Action • James Dorr
• Star-Crossed Lovers • Brian Gene Olson
• honey, I’m home • Davian Aw
• [bell, book, and candle] • Marcus Vance
• [human flesh transformed] • Brian Gene Olson
• [another rover] • Denny E. Marshall
• The Colors of an Alien Planet Observed for the First Time • Kendall Evans
• Buy Local • Matt Weber
• [starless night …] • Greg Schwartz
• The Ghost of Ozymandias • Gary Every
• Friggin’ Aliens • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Roadkill Doll • James Dorr
• [moldy hood, cracked scythe] • Gary W. Davis
• [mutated cows] • William Landis
• [Ouroboros] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Poisoned Apples • Christina Sng
• Cyborg Cats • Mary Soon Lee
• Spoiler Alert • Lauren McBride
• Galahad • Mary Soon Lee
• Dinner • S. R. Tombran
• [the indigenes] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Perfect Lover • Colleen Anderson
• [print shop] • LeRoy Gorman
• [the inner system] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• An Ideal Husband • David Barber
• Advice Columnist Replies to Beauty • Sarah Brown Weitzman
• How to Emulate Black Holes • Mary Soon Lee
• Drink of the Gods • Marge Simon
• [Rapunzel gets] • Christina Sng
• Heliobacterium daphnephilum • Rebecca Buchanan
• Cosmovores • J. P. Brown
• After the Rapture • Bruce Boston
• [robot wedding] • Lauren McBride
• The Cameron Lake Cryptid • Richard Stevenson
• Stranger Danger • Beth Cato
• [alien agreement—] • Susan Burch
• Where Late My Lover Did Lie • Allan Rozinski
• [rows of blood-red blobs] • Brian Gene Olson
• Failure of Vision • Ann K. Schwader
• evidence removed • Herb Kauderer
• [the cyborg children—] • dan smith
• Dinosaurs Plot & Wait • Scott E. Green & Herb Kauderer
• [a butterfly darts through] • Christina Sng
• Moths • DJ Tyrer
• [hard-won galactic alliance] • Lauren McBride
• Turritopsos dohrnii’s Silent Invasion • Ronald A. Busse
• [beneath Io’s ice] • David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• [my gray-skinned guest] • E. V. Darke
• Ground Effect • Joseph DeMare
• Polar Night • Jennifer Crow
• [generation ship] • Brian Gene Olson
• The Newest Craze • J. P. Brown
• Telchine • Jeff Crandall
• [in the 5th dimension] • J. P. Brown
• So Long • Allan Rozinski
• caprice • Peter Roberts
• Universal Dance • Karen L Newman