SavagePlanets, October 2021

Imaginaria

A collection of truly mind-bending science-fiction poems exploring the boundaries of the human imagination and challenging our everyday perceptions of reality. What is normal and what is not? You be the judge.

The Nukekubi by Angela Yuriko Smith

I thought she was there just for me---my own terror--- a resident ghost.

It made sense to me. The house was Victorian in the deep, deep South.

Such places have ghosts. She hung behind me, mid-air her face contorted

her hair streaming down

plastered to her shrieking face--- silent, hateful screams.

Like slick tentacles her neck cords trailed to the ground disembodied face

soaked wet from drowning or perhaps from her own tears. She couldn’t tell me.

My nukekubi out of place in Tennessee… out of place like me.

That Dull Blue Planet by Joshua Fagan

They say it’s Home But how can that be if I’ve never been there before? A cold sapphire gem in midst the black-diamond wastes billions of light-years away That’s all it is to me. They say I’m their last Hope But how can that be when I don’t know what I’m supposed to Hope for? Thrusters ignite, blue and white flames Landing would be the hard part, they said But E=MC2, so they’re all dead Twelve years here, twelve hundred there Splashdown, and a crushing weight as I stagger to the shore Gravity’s demoniac spell They say the cold sapphire gem is beautiful, and they’re right Shimmering shore-dirt, emerald plant-stalks Sunlight-draped miracles, but not a soul to share them with.

Behind the Falls by Keith ‘Doc’ Raymond

sheltered, secreted, in the crashing, a splashing silence, hidden behind the waterfall, dewdrops on my lanugo hair.

Frisky, I disrobe balancing on slippery rocks, shedding trail sweat into the cool, arms open, embracing the mist, pulsing into me, there is an urge, a sudden fullness between my legs, swelling, unfolding, engorgement.

Closing my eyes, rhythmic rubbing joining the spray, an invocation, river naiad peak through the water curtain, sprites dance on the edges, and nymphs separate cattails to stare-

Together we caress, sensations spiraling…in spawn and dance.

Stardust in bellies, sparkles beneath skullcaps, spinal fireworkssucking in the foam, exhaling joy, weaving eros, philautia, and agape into a pleasuring swirl.

And then, and then, and then, before the release, giggles! My eyes wide, their eyes wider, a gaggle of geese.

Rather than honk and retreat, they advance! first I am proud, then shy, dressing quickly... it seems they want to practice the local polyglot, removing hands from their open mouths.

I greet and twirl, invite them closer in this cavern, whip of tails, glittering eyelashes, private grins, and they admit they would have done the same too, secreted in the folds behind this water chime.

The First by John Grey

The captain’s asleep, as are the science officer and the chief engineer

and the sun is a giant flame ball whose yellow mists roll across glowing treetops

and I, in my cabin, unshaven, half undressed, but with shades drawn, am saying out aloud, “I saw it first.”

First to see shadows of enormous birds skirt the rim of sun’s fire.

First to see mountains populate once dark spots in the sky.

First to see the herds emerge, descend on the billowing grasses.

First to see the white glass towers of the distant city.

Of all the crew, I am the one whose burgeoning purview is well above his station.

The Lion by Bruce McAllister

Why is it that the mountain lion you thought you saw for a moment in the bed covers of the bedroom at your parents’ friends when you were four, terrified, running down the hallway to your mother’s arms, never really disappeared from your life, but followed you through childhood, looking out from park shadows, from bedroom closets, from under beds, from hedges on sidewalks where the street lamps were broken, always asking with eyes you could never quite see why you did not give it a name that day when you could have. Every living thing, within us or without, deserves a name—you see that now—even the ones that scare us most when we are four, or forty-five and trying to sleep (but failing), or ninety and slipping toward the arms of death. Instead, you grew up to write stories about fearless women and men in a distant future carried by clever starships to stunning worlds, all of which bear names you have given them, as do those men and women, who, like you (never confessing it to a soul), fear one thing and one thing only: a shadow darker than any in a bedroom closet pursuing them under the glorious blaze of twin stars on a tough yet beautiful planet so important to the fate of humanity in the stories you keep writing, pursuing them (and you) because a child they have never met, lost as he is to time and another world, did not name what must always be named.