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SCIFAIKUEST ONLINE

August 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Habitat Units Rocketship

by Denny Marshall

 

EDITORIAL

 

Happy Anniversary, Readers!

 

From its inception more than two decades ago, I’ve had the pleasure, privilege and honor to serve as the editor of Scifaikuest.

 

Over the years, I’ve gotten to know many brilliant poets, artists and authors, from our newest contributors, to those who have stood with us from the beginning. But the one person who stands out the most, the one responsible for the awesome opportunity to be involved so thoroughly in the creation and continuation of Scifaikuest, is our managing editor, Tyree Campbell. To say that I’m grateful is just so inadequate. Scifaikuest and our family at Hiraeth Publishing have changed my life in uncountable ways, and I’m forever indebted to all of them, but especially to Mr. Campbell. Each anniversary, I recount in my mind how blessed I am to be part of this marvelous universe of publishing.

 

So. A toast from all of us here at Scifaikuest, wishing all of you, our Readers, another happy anniversary, and many more. Good health to all or, as Mr. Campbell would say, “Slainte!”

 

 

Scifaikuest finally has its own ISBN!!! Please inform your local book stores and library that they are now able to ORDER SCIFAIKUEST!!!

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You can always find us here, at Hiraeth Books at: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/home-1

 

If you don’t have a subscription to our PRINT edition, they are available at: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/scifaikuest

 

And, if you would like to join the select group of contributors by submitting your poetry, artwork or article, you can find our guidelines at: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/scifaikuest

 

Pssst! Looking for something good to read?

You can get t.santitoro’s newest novella, Those Who Die, at

THOSE WHO DIE by t. santitoro | Hiraeth Publishing (hiraethsffh.com)

You can also order t.santitoro's latest novella, Adopted Child, at:

https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/adopted-child-by-t-santitoro

You can also get a copy of her novelette, The Legend of Trey Valentine, at: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/legend-of-trey-valentine-by-teri-santitoro

 

a luau on the beach

the fragrance of rising smoke

Crojan vacation

 

-sakyu-

 

***

 

SCIFAIKU

 

lost his key  

to the time machine  

no future for him

 

DUI, by John Granville  

 

 

universal translator  

returning from the past  ONLINE

his Babel glower  

 

universal translator, by John Granville  

 

*

 

viewing Earth

through a telescope
history assignment

 

Stephen C. Curro

 

 

*

 

midway between

Mars and Earth…
floating in my cabin

 

Stephen C. Curro

 

*

 

Saturn in the sky

even on Titan
snowball fights happen

 

Stephen C. Curro

 

*

 

starport security

backpack confiscated
for weighing too much

 

Stephen C. Curro

 

*

 

Holodeck C – 1958

 

three horses appear

holographic hay and feed

chores are not work here

 

H.T. Grossen

 

*

 

Putting my Childhood Gameboy Back in the Drawer

 

LCD switched off

ghostlike images remain

memories fade slowly

 

H.T. Grossen

 

***

who’s on the menu 
Herb Kauderer

space station diner
names meals for dead astronauts
all food a last meal

 

*

tradition made practical 
Herb Kauderer

tossing a bouquet
gathered in hydroponics
cucumber flowers

 

*

abstinence 
Herb Kauderer

cryogenic sleep
decades sleeping alone
nothing but wet dreams

 

*

 

group sentience
nanoparticles
acquire larger purpose

 

Douglas J. Lanzo

 

*

 

metallic being

programmed to serve and obey

robot marches on

 

Yuliia Vereta

 

*

 

paths untraveled yet

alternative history

loosing what could have been

 

Yuliia Vereta

 

*

 

whispers in the mind

telepathy's silent voice

connection unseen

 

Yuliia Vereta

 

*

 

now bend the fabric

space-time teleportation

journey in a blink

 

Yuliia Vereta

 

*

 

trapped in a prison

mind control's icy grip holds

freedom is mirage

 

Yuliia Vereta

 

*

 

​

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It Landed

by Denise Noe

 

***

 

SENRYU

 

Monsters and Bloodsuckers Through Eons Ancient and Modern

 

heavyweight champ
throat bitten in final match
he’s down for the Count

 

Gary Davis

 

***

 

TANKA

 

spacecraft hurtling 

a thousand crew 

in eternal stasis

unaware

of the computer malfunction

 

Richard E. Schell

 

*

 

interplanetary probe

in hyperbolic flyby

sending observations

of our world

to a civilization long extinct

 

Richard E. Schell

 

*

 

completing our tasks

measurements confirmed

we stop and marvel

a landscape of duel shadows

cast by binary stars 

 

Richard E. Schell

 

***

 

OTHER FORMS (including: Sijo, Fibonacci, Cinquain, Minutes, Diminuendo, Ghazals,Threesomes, Brick, etc.)

 

FIBONACCI

droid
no
longer
human’s droid
has become human
while human
became
the
droid

Guy Belleranti

 

***

 

GOGYOHKA

Wittgenstein’s World 
       Herb Kauderer


a self-erasing society
lives for the moment
leaves no record for the ages
passes without comment
no trace except its philosopher/father

 

***
 

JOINED POEMS (incl. renku and sedoka, joined fib. Etc.)

 

JOINED FIBONACCI


in
that
room on
the wood floor
rests a rug and both
floor and rug
smother
the
cries
beneath
but neither
can smother the stench
rising through
both floor
and
rug

Guy Belleranti

 

***

 

HAIBUN

 

Handyman Special by Rick Jackofsky

 

Shortly after moving into our circa 1929 fixer-upper converted beach house, I found myself lying flat on my back under the kitchen sink. It was about three o'clock in the morning, but I couldn't sleep knowing how much work I needed to get done. While struggling to loosen the rusty S-trap, I discovered a small door in the wall directly behind the drain pipe. I thought this was a bit strange. The door was upside down, which made perfect sense since I was lying flat on my back. What struck me as odd was that there was even a door under my kitchen sink at all.

 

spreading slowly

across the kitchen floor

a puddle . . .  of moonlight

 

On one side of the door were two ancient-looking rusty iron hinges. On the other side, there was a simple sliding deadbolt. I tried, without success, to move the bolt, but it obviously had not been opened for quite a long time. Of course, there was only one thing I could do . . . spray that sucker with God's gift to the handyman; WD-40™! I gave the magic formula some time to do its work; finally, after a fair amount of pushing, pulling, hammering, and cussing, I pried the door open.

 

backlight—

my shadow

leads the way

 

What I found behind that little door was not what I expected. I thought I would find some long-forgotten access point to a plumbing or electrical junction, but what was revealed by my efforts was nothing of the sort. I didn't find any pipes or wires, not even a bit of insulation. The door opened into a brightly lit, art-deco-style train station adorned with intricately tiled arches, chandelier lighting, and leaded glass skylights. The door was barely big enough to stick my head through, but after a quick peek, I realized that I was, or at least my head was, in a New York City subway station. Lettering on the wall, a few yards to my right, spelled out: C-I-T-Y  H-A-L-L. A few people were milling around, but the station was mostly deserted. Not too shocking. It was 3 am, after all. I may have been peeking into "The City That Never Sleeps," but I guess even insomniacs slow down a little bit in the wee hours of the morning.

 

chandeliers

casting tangled shadows

on the subway wall

 

Now my curiosity was really piqued! I dragged myself out from under the sink and ran downstairs to get my trusty Sawzall™. The reciprocating saw made quick work of the cabinet wall; before long, I had enlarged the door enough to get my shoulders through. After squeezing through the enlarged opening, I took a leisurely stroll along the platform. While admiring the craftsmanship that went into the City Hall subway station's design and construction, I noticed a forlorn-looking man standing a little too close to the edge of the platform. His head was hanging down while his arms dangled limply at his sides. In his left hand, he held a leather briefcase; in his other hand was a copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The headline on the front page read: "WALL ST. IN PANIC AS STOCKS CRASH.” Just then, as the sound of a train came thundering towards the station, I realized that this sad-looking man was about to jump in front of the oncoming train. He had one foot hanging over the track when I grabbed him by the back of his collar and pulled him back onto the platform. As the train rumbled into the station, I led him over to a seat away from the track, where the poor fellow collapsed in a heap and began to weep and moan. He said he had lost everything. All he had left was a little cottage on Long Island. I tried to console him with the old cliche, "Well, at least you have your health." Definitely not a good idea; the keening, if anything, got even worse as his sad story echoed off the tiled subway walls. Finally, I said, "That little cottage out on the Island sure sounds like a great place to get a fresh start on a long and happy life.” This seemed to comfort him a bit.

 

lost

in the clouds

sunrise

 

Once convinced that he wasn’t going to do anything rash, I bid him adieu. As I was getting up to go, I glanced down at his briefcase and noticed that the leather case had an engraved nameplate; It read “Louis J. Lunsford Esq.” Which coincidentally, or not, happened to be the name of the elderly gentleman who had just recently sold us our new, old house.

 

straddling

the edge of the ocean

now and then

 

I made my way back to my kitchen via the hole under the sink. After cleaning up a bit, I dragged myself to bed. I slept late that morning. When I finally did get out of bed, I found a message on my answering machine. The disembodied voice on the tape machine informed me that, sadly, Mr. Lunsford had passed away during the night. Before drifting off to sleep that evening, he asked his nurse to convey his wish that I, and my family, should live a long and happy life in our little cottage by the sea. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, then grabbed a flashlight, and looked under the sink. The plumbing work was complete, and there was no sign whatsoever of a door that might lead to the NYC subway system.

 

Indian summer

catching some rays

in a jar of beach glass

 

***

 

The Note

 

The suicide note was written in your own hand. It was done at my request under the guise of your helping me write one for a story. Your fingerprints on the gun were the easy part. I called the emergency number immediately. When authorities arrived, my innocence was beyond reproach.

 

consequences considered

all loose ends tied  

what details forgotten

 

Richard E. Schell

 

***

 

ARTICLE

 

Inscrutable

Robert E. Porter

​

Somewhere I came across the idea that the same character stood for “mountain” and “monastery” in Japanese. Aha! I thought. And cranked out:

“mountain” and “monastery”

one Japanese character

brings them both

to the page

though rooted elsewhere

 

Working title: Inscrutable.

Inscrutable, indeed!

​

Japanese is not one of my languages. I certainly can’t read it. And when I searched for a credible source for my catalyst, I found none. Different characters stood for “mountain” and “monastery.” That kicked a knee out from under my tanka.

​

But did I need it?

​

Surely one Japanese “character” (poet) could bring “mountain” and “monastery” to the page. That can be done with strokes of a brush or pen without uprooting any building or changing any landscape. Mountains need not be moved by poetry. But people moved by poetry do build monasteries. And devour mountains.

That is the power and the promise of poetry.

​

Scrutinize my poem. Find it wanting. What does it matter? It is not the poem that is inscrutable; it is poetry. The poem that rouses a people here can fall on deaf ears in the next valley, or the next generation. “Greensleeves” – why do we remember “Greensleeves”? And not the greaves, the landsknecht codpiece, or the red velvet pantaloons?

​

Here is a tanka by Fujiwara No Atsutada from the 10th century, translated a thousand years later by Kenneth Rexroth:

​

I think of the days

Before I met her

When I seemed to have

No troubles at all.

(Rexroth, 14)

 

The poet/narrator hardly echoes pop tunes and teenybopper fluff. He doesn’t push the illusions of love or cling to a fabrication of reality. Instead, he plumbs Lovecraftian depths. Notice the word “seemed” in the third line. Did she bring troubles into his life? Or open his eyes and make him face what he’d long tried to ignore?

​

Wherever you go, there you are. And whatever you bring along weighs you down. Everything must go, but the emperor’s clothes, or you’ll drown like mad King Ludwig.

​

The beehive hairdo, the wasp waist, the barbed stinger to the heart… – things to be taken as seriously as Punch and Judy, or Cher and Sonny Liston. That old one-two. Set-up and punchline. Laugh it off, or die trying.

​

“What was later called humor, on the contrary, arose from English soil,” said Robert Escarpit. “This manner of being, of seeing and understanding came from the depths of body and soul, and owes much to wit. But it has taken on a life of its own.” (Escarpit, 40)

​

And if the bard of Lady Avon was right about wit’s soul and brevity, why shouldn’t the briefest of poems be especially witty and alive with humor? Why shouldn’t ku outdo Mr. Magoo, Yogi Bera, Groucho Marx, John Lennon, Dorothy Parker’s Algonquin round table, or the Monty Pythons of Delphi?

The humor can be as dark as matter or black as a hole. For ex., my atomic sunset:

​

the fat man and his little boy

on the last boat out

of Nagasaki

 

Before I strayed from the good shepherd, I heard a parable about a man and his son on their way to that city’s market. The son was eager to sell their produce. The older man took his time and focused on the journey itself, much to the frustration of his son. The atomic bomb went off over Urakami cathedral, wiping out the Christian neighborhood. What was the moral, then? That devout prayers and practices provide no protection from divine practical jokes? That it’s better to live in the moment? Take one step at a time? Steer clear of Scylla and Charybdis, or any polarizing extremes?

​

Nothing too much.

​

How many prophets, rogues and charlatans proclaimed this eternal truth (nature’s law of homeostasis) from the harems of Harrod’s to the wine-sellers of Skid Row?

​

It is easier said than done.

​

These days, I keep going back to Kenneth Rexroth, a polyglot voice of moderation and sustainability in a pop culture often driven to excess and designed obsolescence. In Rexroth’s introduction to One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, he said:

​

“I should like the poems in this collection to stand as poetry in English, and even, in a sense, as poetry by a contemporary American poet, because I have chosen only those poems with which I felt considerable identifications. On the whole, they are as literal as any versions I know except [Arthur] Waley's. Nonetheless, the putting of them into English has been a creative process, differing only in power from that with which I would express my own thoughts.” (Rexroth)

​

Such power brought old, old poems to life and relevance in a New World, providing a catalyst to much haiku and scifaiku.

​

“It is part of the very genius of the human mind,” said Alan Watt, “that it can, as it were, stand aside from life and reflect upon it, that it can be aware of its own existence, and that it can criticize its own processes.” (Watt, 136)

​

Through poetry that flows cool, clear, and inscrutable—

​

As opposed to the monasteries of hot-headed punks with their mountains of molten earwax and steam.

 

WORKS CITED

 

Escarpit, Robert. L'Humour. Presses Universitaires de France: Vendôme, 1967. 4th edition.

 

My translation of:

« Ce qu'on devait appeler plus tard l'humour, au contraire, est neé sur la terre anglaise. Cette manière d'être, de voir et de comprendre, venue des profondeurs des corps et des âmes, a reçu du wit sa formulation. Elle s'en est ensuite détachée pour vivre sa vie propre. »

 

Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Japanese. New Directions: New York, 1964.

 

Watt, Alan. The Way of Zen. Vintage Books, 1989.

 

***
 

FEATURED POET Lloyd Daub

 

almost Heaven--

lying in each other's arms

in the escape pod

 

lucindab

 

*  

 

insect buzz

of helmet radio static--

loss of signaller

 

oino sakai

 

*

 

Saturn rising over

empty vistas of Encedalus--

I drink alone

 

oino sakai

 

*

 

desert heat

shimmers the horizon--

second sun setting

 

oino sakai

 

*** 

 

TECHNOLOGY

 

insect buzz

of helmet radio static--

loss of signaller

 

oino sakai

 

*

 

twin crescents

in our nightly sky

Borea and its moon--

gravity fields will be wild

small spacecraft warning

 

os

 

*

 

they must have been

beautiful babies

but look at them now--

pitted and scarred

veteran spaceships

 

lucindab

 

*

 

DNA editing hole in my genes

 

os

 

*

 

not off to a good start :

three rocket stages

all igniting at once

 

os

 

*

 

hopelessly devoted--

in love with her inventor

he doesn’t know she’s alive

 

lucindab

 

*

 

breaking up is hard to do--

lament from a starship junkyard

 

os

 

*

 

small price to pay

convert the solar system to energy

plug in the wormhole

 

os

  

*

 

Goldilocks launch:

port booster too hot, starboard too cold

main engine just right

 

lucindab

 

*

 

from worse to worst--

first the nova then the black hole

SIGH ........

 

os

 

***

 

WORLDS

 

stormy day :

as if there is any other kind

on Cyclonna's moon

 

oino sakai

 

*

 

hard putt

on the eighth moon--

cratered!

 

os

 

*

 

tough business--

gasoline salesman

on Titan

 

os

 

*

 

raindrops keep falling

on my exosuit--

Mars' drought is over

 

lucindab

 

*

 

supergiant to black hole for eternity an eyeblink

 

os

 

*

 

nitric acid clouds

over sulfur seas--

here I am the monster

 

lucindab

 

*

 

hot foot inevitable on Venus

 

os

 

 

***

 

SPACERS

 

adrenaline junkie :

main engine throttled up

at Max-Q

 

oino sakai

 

*

 

first and last

at the finish line--

wormhole racer

 

os

 

*

 

perfect shot

into the engine room

now we're the honored dead

 

lucindab

 

*

 

skin in the game:

betting my exosuit

I call

 

os

 

*

 

down to my last air bottle primal scream

 

lucindab

 

***

 

LOVE

 

second spouses

must tread carefully

around the memories --

every medal she earned

displayed in the starship wardrooom

 

oino sakai

 

*

 

on planet Niagara

nights last six months

newlywed specials--

left exit for Obstetrics

divorce court to the right

 

lucindab

 

*

 

launched by starship--

I have nothing to lose

and you to gain

 

os

 

*

 

every zero-g kiss

is a breakup drama--

I hate Newton's Third Law

 

lucindab

 

*

 

loves me loves me not quantum entanglement

 

os

 

*

 

intercom left on--

the whole starship hears

our wedding night

 

lucindab

 

*

 

serial monogamy--

a spouse in every spaceport

never the same world twice

 

os

 

*

 

with these rings I thee wed Saturn spouse

 

lucindab

 

*

 

it's blue not silver

but it's our Moon now--

let's snuggle

 

os

 

 

XOXOXO

 

***

 

Lloyd Daub BIOGRAPHY

 

Lloyd Daub lives in a great place near a Great Lake.  Specifically Greenfield WI.  So far he's lived there pretty much his whole life.  Physically, that is.  Mentally he's been all over space and time, and still traveling.

 

He's been writing and sharing haiku poetry most of that life, but began to do much more of both when he encountered the Diamond Bullet web bulletin board and realized he had been writing Scifaiku, and not just haiku.  When the DB group disbanded, he followed the webmaster to the Yahoo Scifaiku group, where he was one of the moderators and mentors for the newbies.

 

That's where he had the great joy of encountering Teri Santitoro, among other loving and talented poets.  He published more than 2000 poems and renga links on the Yahoo group, and when Teri became editor at Scifaikuest, he naturally submitted works to her.

 

From the beginning of his Scifaiku career, Lloyd wrote under two haigothat is, pseudonyms.  The most prolific was oino sakai, and the other was Lucinda Borkenhagen.

 

These names came from characters Lloyd created for a role-playing game called Stalking The Night Fantastic.  oino was created as comic reliefa goofy former shortstop turned sports reporter.  The name came from a supposed ancestor of his, the ace fighter pilot of the Japanese Navy in WWIISaburo Sakai.

 

Lucinda was created as a ghost oino encountered for one of the Stalking scenarios.  In life she had been a high priestess of Isis, although her time in office had been in America during the great King Tut fad of the 1920s.  Her name came from Lloyd's own relatives, the Borkenhagens.

 

Per his nature as the RPG character, oino's poems are sometimes comical and witty. All right, punny.  Lucy's poems are more often romantic, dreamy, or spiritual. In Magickal terms, oino is AIR, and Lucinda is SPIRIT. Magickyes, spelled that wayis likewise from the Stalking RPG.

 

More mundanely, and under the haigo of oino sakai, Lloyd has been the Featured Poet before at Scifaikuest.  And as oino would put it, like a bad penny, here he is again.  Lucy hopes you enjoy the works in this issue.

 

***

 

INTERVIEW WITH FEATURED POET LLOYD DAUB

 

In an unusual twist, our Featured Poet, Lloyd Daub, has chosen to conduct an interview of his alter-egos! Thus we have Lloyd Daub interviewing both oino sakai and Lucinda Borkenhagen. --editor’s note.

​

Lloyd : Well gang, here we all are together again, just like our old MSFire Magazine days. Congratulations on being hired as the Featured Poets for Scfaikuest Magazine Online!

 

oino : Thanks Uncle Lloyd. It's nice to have a paying gig again.

 

Lucinda : The laborer is worth his hire, oino. That explains your lack of income.

 

oino: I have an income! Uncle Lloyd gives me an allowance, same as you. Doesn't he?

 

Lucinda: Of course.

 

oino: You know there's a word for a person who takes money from strange men.

 

Lucinda: Yes, but with your tiny vocabulary, I doubt that you know it.

 

oino: Got you! I made you admit Uncle Lloyd is kind of strange. Talking to himself and all.

 

Lucinda: That's just one of the things I love about him. You don't have to reply, you know. Thanks for the appreciation, Uncle Lloyd. And thanks to Auntie Teri too, for making us an offer we couldn't refuse.

 

Lloyd : It was a gamble on her part, yes. But we're grateful for being published again, all the same.

 

oino : Thanks Auntie Teri!

 

Lucinda : I hope all your readers like what we sent in!

 

Lloyd : Stop wriggling, you two. No one can see you waving, either. Gratitude is one thing; acting like demented puppies is something else.

 

oino : Lucy, I think Uncle Lloyd called you what they call female dogs.

 

Lucinda : See everyone? I told you oino's vocabulary is limitedhe knows there is a word, but he can't say it!

 

Lloyd : That's because this magazine has a 'family' audience. It's PG-13 at the most.

 

oino : Mum's the word.

 

Lucinda : No it isn't; it starts with a "B." But in honor of a G-rating, I'll tell you later.

 

Lloyd : If we could get on with this interview thing ....

 

oino : Uncle Lloyd, if we three are all here like in the old Sinatra days, are we Echo and Shadow and Me?

 

Lucinda : Or Id, Ego and Superego?

 

Lloyd : I never understand which one of those is which.

 

oino : It doesn't matter. I always thought Freud was a Fraud.

 

Lucinda : Is this the part where the drummer hits the snare twice and crashes the cymbal?

 

Lloyd : Ahem! If I can have a small share of your limited attention span, Teri sent us some interview questions, so her readers learn more about the poets doing the writing. For example, "How long have you been writing poetry, especially scifaiku?"

 

Lucinda : I wouldn't call what oino does 'writing,' Uncle Lloyd. He sort of scribbles, if you know what I mean.

 

oino: At least it's in English, not hieroglyphics!

 

Lucinda: Isis understands me; that's all that counts. Uncle Lloyd knows how to read a translation dictionary. If you could read, it would help.

 

oino: With me, Uncle Lloyd doesn't need a translator. Just a magnifying glass. He's getting old, you know. All squinty.

 

Lucinda : Alas. So maybe it's fortunate that his hearing is also going, so he can't hear all your insults. First 'strange,' and now 'old.'

 

Lloyd : Readers, this is what the man meant by saying 'every family is happy in its own way.'

 

oino : I don't think that's exactly what he wrote.

 

Lucinda : Uncle Lloyd has an automatically censoring memory.

 

Lloyd : Among other things, I'm losing track of how long you two have been writing scifaiku, or how exactly you got involved in it. I know you were sharing them with me before I signed us up for the Diamond Bullet listserv, and the Yahoo Group came later than that. So it's been a long time.

 

oino : A long and winding road.

 

Lucinda : Stop there, or we have to pay royalties to The Beatles.

 

~~~~

 

Lloyd : Teri also wants to know who we admire as fellow poets, and who influenced us the most, and that sort of thing.

 

oino : Whoever we read last influences us the most.

 

Lucinda : Until we read someone else.

 

Lloyd : You mean you're copycats?

 

oino : Ha! No. More like we read or have read so many poets, and the basis of the art of haiku is allusion to the great poems of the past.

 

Lucinda : oino, you said 'allusion.' That's a big word for someone as short as you!

 

oino : Here's another one. Inspiration. We read or hear something, and it makes us think of something similar or something complementary, and so we write a new poem of our own.

 

Lucinda : That's the skill used in renga and other forms of linked poetry. We don't get a chance to do that much any more, since the Yahoo Group was disbanded.

 

oino : But that whole gang influenced us a lot, because we enjoyed them so muchushi, sakyu, semi, lucien, MMS....

 

Lucinda : Yet there's one poet from there we loved the most, and miss the most. Ulf Wiman.

 

oino : SIGH. Yes. I sure wish we could share more life with Ulfie.

 

Luclinda : I think I'm going to go cry now. I loved that man.

 

Lloyd : We all did. He was a splendid poet, a good reader--

 

oino: and an even better mis-reader. We'd have such a laugh when he misunderstood what I wrote, and then I'd realize he'd seen something meaningful or beautiful in a poem I hadn't, even though I was the author!

 

Lucinda: It led to even better poems that followed up on that mis-read.

 

Lloyd : And he was a courteous and generous commenter, and a fine teacher. He was the best.

 

oino : Now I'm crying.

 

Lloyd: Teri, I think we may as well end here. The paper is getting soggy. Most of your questions are embedded in here anyway. Thanks again for featuring Echo and Shadow, and me.

 

***

 

MY FAVORITE POEM by editor, t. santitoro

 

I don’t usually pick a haibun for my “favorite poem” but this issue’s Handyman Special by Rick Jackofsky is spectacular. Go back and re-read this awesome story! THIS is how you do it right!!! WOW! Kudos, Rick!

 

***

 

BIOS

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"Stephen Curro hails from Windsor, Colorado.  Along with Scifaikuest, his short fiction and poetry has appeared in The Fifth Di... and Daily Science Fiction, among other venues. His sci-fi novelette The Spark is also available through Hiraeth Publishing.  In addition to speculative fiction and poetry, Stephen writes educational materials for the nonprofit Taproot Guru.  When he isn't writing, he works as a high school paraprofessional.  When he isn't working, he enjoys scuba diving and plotting to trick his dad into watching Lord of the Rings.  You can keep up with his shenanigans at www.stephenccurro.com."

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H.T. Grossen lives and writes beneath the long evening shadow of the Rocky Mountains in Pueblo, Colorado with his magical wife and pulchritudinous daughters. He enjoys teaching, whether he is at work or not. He writes poems and fiction of many genres, mainly Science Fiction and Fantasy. You can find more about his work at htgrossen.com

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Rick Jackofsky, poet, songwriter, and paterfamilias of The Homegrown String Band, enjoys reading, writing, and sharing captured moments of clarity. His haiku, senryu, tanka, and haibun have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.

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Herb Kauderer lives in a windstorm where his sighs cannot be heard.no trace except its philosopher/father

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Douglas J. Lanzo: I am an award-winning American author (novelist and poet) who enjoys teaching haiku to my identical twin sons, Alex and Gregory, who have published haiku in 8 literary journals in 3 countries.  Since 2019, my poems have been published in 66 literary journals and poetry anthologies around the world.  My award-winning, coming of age Maine adventure novel, The Year of the Bear, is available on Amazon and other online retailers, with additional information about my and my twin sons' poems available at www.douglaslanzo.com

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Lloyd Daub has written scifaiku and other poetry forms for many years, using the haigo of oino sakai and lucindab (Lucinda Borkenhagen).  He lives in a great place near a Great Lake.

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Richard E. Schell works in the biomedical field in California. He enjoys writing and has been published over fifty times in both the biomedical field as well as in fictional genres and poetry. He enjoys photography, literature, and travel. He also volunteers in animal rescue.

 

FIN

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