Scifaikuest
NOVEMBER 2020 ONLINE
Streaming Chair by Denny Marshall
EDITORIAL
Please be aware that we have some IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS, below
ATTENTION!!!
IMPORTANT INFORMATION regarding our magazine:
Scifaikuest finally has it's own ISBN!!! Please inform your local book stores and library that they are now able to ORDER SCIFAIKUEST!!!
If you don’t have a subscription to our PRINT edition, it is available at our subscription page.
And, if you would like to join the select group of contributors by submitting your poetry, artwork or article, you can find our guidelines here.
Pssst! Looking for something to read? You can order t.santitoro's latest novelette, The Legend of Trey Valentine, from THIS LINK and 2 of her short stories appear in Alban Lake's anthology, Only the Lonely, edited by Tyree Campbell. Find it at THIS LINK. Finally, her newest short story appears in the Hiraeth Book's anthology, No Greater Love: Martyrs of Earth and Elsewhere, edited by Robert Krog, which you can find at THIS LINK.
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SCIFAIKU
vampire snacks at noon
after gulping blood all night
solar eclipse
Gary W. Davis
***
shapeshifter’s party
lots of bright, new
faces
Akua Lezli Hope
***
old habits die hard
my reanimated dog
wags its tail at me
Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
***
meteor impact
babies born near the area
grow extra limbs
Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
***
mixed-race nephew
staring at me from his crib
six eyes unblinking
Ngo Binh Anh Khoa
***
autumn night
the whorl of a galaxy
in my teacup
Laura Garrison
***
colonist’s final rest
corpse tied to space waste
launched into an orange star
funeral pyre
Herb Kauderer
***
undocumented aliens
foreign microbes crawl
from asteroid at center
fresh crater on Mars
Herb Kauderer
***
carved head
glowing eyes of a killer
jack-o'-lantern
Dinesh Shihantha De Silva
***
our old ones don’t die
passing through another space
their genes within us
ayaz daryl nielsen
***
ringing buoy
the only proof
the serpent was there
Stephen C. Curro
***
wrong button
a distraught T. rex
staggers through the portal
Stephen C. Curro
***
a lifelong aversion
to red apples and trust
snow white the survivor
Christina Sng
***
"Sweet Dreams"
working all week
to pay for dreams
pretending to be human
Matthew Wilson
*
"Food Shortages"
food growth impossible
shrinking customers instead
solving hunger problems.
Matthew Wilson
***
new recruit giggling
in latrine
not as funny in zero gee
Robin Mayhall
***
nanobots
preserve this form
now undead
Andrea Gradidge
***
nanorobotics—
human bodies write with
silver fingerprints
Leona Wilde
***
wish upon a nebula
the first space war
ends with dust
Leona Wilde
***
adaptation
threatened worker bees
honey turned to venom
Leona Wilde
***
alien tourist
his face and hands orange
from cheese-balls
John J. Dunphy
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SENRYU
all my stories as
I age beyond my star-treks
some are even true
ayaz daryl nielsen
***
mars mission on track
since getting engine design
of Santa Claus sleigh
Denny E. Marshall
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Valentine’s Day
visit from a vampire
would you like a kiss?
Guy Belleranti
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smoldering wall
I’m shocked the laser
actually worked
Stephen C. Curro
***
HORRORKU
lasting impression
“don’t tread on me”
ghost of a child soldier
buried in a minefield
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
Tangled
under the dry creek bed
her lifeline
tangled in mine
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
tail end
the "shredded tire"
my little girl picked up
a black mamba
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
true crime
held for ransom
can't afford the co-pay
for life-saving meds
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
the kids, these days
they stuck my left hand in
and turned the mixer on
now I'm always right
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
league of their own
ash wood bat
to his kneecap
how they got to first base
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
unspoken rule
the unspoken rule
learned when they cut out your tongue
dummy up
Benjamin Whitney Norris
***
Halloween mugger
chooses wrong partygoer
vampire costume real
Guy Belleranti
***
home again
a genetic war
carnivorous grasses feast
apes return to trees
Herb Kauderer
***
unwary landlord
meat lover rents the house ...
neighbours go missing
Dinesh Shihantha De Silva
***
lizard aliens
begin conquest in China
new menu item
DJ Tyrer
***
mechanical gulp
trapped in its metal belly
man-eating robot
William Landis
***
event horizon
the first groan
of the ship’s hull
Stephen C. Curro
***
FIRST CONTACT OTHER PLANET
Denny Marshall
***
TANKA
bringing
my kitty back
from the grave
I promised her
I’d never leave her
Christina Sng
***
longing
to be extinguished
every single day
thousand-year old ghost
still stuck at home
Christina Sng
***
after the wedding
his true face reemerges
the beast is a beast again
beauty realizing too late
it was too good to be true
Christina Sng
***
ARTICLE
Minos, Taurus, and ME
By Robert E. Porter
Paul Klee used to talk of taking a line for a walk. That was a pet peeve of his, I think. It was one of his bugbears. And mine. I picture it like this: I put pen to paper and see where it takes me. To a graven image, maybe. The sacrosanct in mirror shades, lurking behind the Coke machine with a butterfly knife and a bag of frozen shrimp, mumbling to himself about cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers, Elrond Hubbard and the Engrams of Rivendell. Or the line could take me bar-crawling to find a crapulent poem, turned upside down on a red vinyl stool, with an anus where its mouth should be, trying very hard to look presidential as it gums a Reader’s Digest and grunts into its twitter feed. The line could rise up through the rats in the walls to form an essay of Lovecraftian proportions, instead. Or it could lead to a piece of fiction, torn from my upper thigh with calipers and hung on a bloody fingernail. A thing of beauty and distinction, surely, raised on Gerber’s gerunds – or a piece of real garbage, reeking with bad puns, just offal. (“Smell you later!”)
I don’t care. It’s all the same to me. Whatever it is, it left my memory palace trailing from the entrails of a footpad to the delight of a one-eyed cat named Miles, who isn’t around anymore, and I miss him. I miss him more than anything. The fence puts my lines out on display in his pawnshop window, and it’s a good thing if I don’t recognize The Damned Thing as my own. It’s a good thing if I don’t recognize any of Them. If I don’t know where this stuff comes from, then anything personal has been stripped away. Then we have the truth laid bare, and what I feel now cannot be embarrassment; it is the vicarious thrill of the voyeur as a Fer-de-lance is boiled, or a boil lanced.
In other words: That’s not me, up there, on the stage. It’s some other tortured soul, singing for his supper in the halls of Valhalla. It’s a tortilla made up to look just like Sir Elton John with rhinestone goggles and a supercharged pompadour, playing cousin Jethro in the resurrection of Jesus Christ Superstar, or Judas Priest officiating at the wedding of PB & J.
Whose line is it, anyway?
It could be yours, to start with; in the end, it could be anyone’s. For ex.,
“The geese passed by on their way north, and the red-winged black birds have arrived almost 2 months early, so maybe it will be an early spring. I hope so, for the bird's sake. I hate to think of them getting hit with snow!”
Becomes:
Red Wings and black birds
arriving two months early
field dressed on the snow
I don’t know if I could write a better haiku than this one if I actually went outside, got some fresh air and exercise, tuned out the harmful narrative (worrying about things I have no control over, or trying to solve all of my own problems at once) and tuned into my senses; but I might be a better haiku-writer as a result. I might be a better person. That’s what I’m working on… when I’m not going off on tangents, playing with words instead of reaching for something more tangible, more like the tang that goes down inside the handle and turns a blade into a knife -- as if anything so sharp was needed to cut the bull, and be myself.
***
FAVORITE POEM by editor t.santitoro
shapeshifter’s party
lots of bright new
faces
Akua Lezli Hope
This says so much!!! Perfectly concise. Nice job!
BIOS
Stephen C. Curro: I live in Windsor, Colorado and I have a Masters degree in Educational Psychology. I work as a middle school paraprofessional and a reading tutor. I have previously published poetry and fiction with Acorn Haiku, Daily Science Fiction and 365tomorrows.
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Dinesh Shihantha De Silva: A published author (of creative books, flash fiction) and poet (haiku, senryu) from Sri Lanka. Other hobbies include chess, soccer and music. Full details about the published works at "See Your About Info" on: facebook.com/DineshShihanthaDeSilva
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Laura Garrison lives in southwest Virginia with her patient husband, mischievous children, and surly cat. She likes rainy days and ghost stories, and she hopes to open an intergalactic cheese shop someday.
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Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal to create poems, patterns, sculpture, stories, music, adornments and peace whenever possible. She lives with an indifferent black cat. She has published 127 crochet designs, served as a volunteer leader for Amnesty International and founded a paratransit nonprofit. Her collection Them Gone, was published in 2018 by The Word Works.
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William Landis has been previously published in Scifaikuest, Star*line, Tales of the Talisman, Scierogenous 2, and has been nominated for the Dwarf Star Anthology. Beyond writing he is an agronomist for a state university and a weekend warrior.
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Robin Mayhall is a writer, editor and PR professional with a lifelong yen for science fiction and fantasy stories and poetry. Disabled by rheumatoid arthritis, she still works full-time, loves reading and getting lost on the internet, and is interested in history, especially World War I, journalism and media, healthcare issues and politics. She lives in Louisiana with her cat, Banichi.
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Ngo Binh Anh Khoa is currently teaching English at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH), and in his free time, he enjoys daydreaming and writing dark verses for entertainment. His poems have recently been featured in Scifaikuest, Star*Line, The Audient Void, and other venues.
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DJ Tyrer is the person behind Southend-on-Sea-based small press Atlantean Publishing, was placed second in the 2015 Data Dump Award for Genre Poetry, and has been published in The Rhysling Anthology 2016, issues of Cyaegha, The Horrorzine, Sirens Call, Star*Line, and Tigershark. The echapbook One Vision is available from Tigershark Publishing’s website.
DJ Tyrer's website is at
The Atlantean Publishing website is at
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Leona Wilde is a poet returning from a long hiatus after slaying her suburban demons. She is currently working on two chapbooks about trauma and healing that will be free to read on her personal website once she figures out how coding works. When she isn't writing, she's binge-watching the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and searching for a D&D group to play a Stranger Things inspired campaign.
