We've a delicious mixture of shorter bite-sized sci-fi, fantasy and dystopian poetry for you now from Francis W. Alexander, John Reinhart, Holly Walrath, Greg Schwartz, Susan Burch and Lauren McBride.


Universal Fads 

Segregated Southern graveyards
proudly peering at infinity
When the end comes.
broken and boiled
caskets and bones mix
with no regard for race.

...Francis W. Alexander


superheroes

on the bus
on the lightrail

cutting through traffic
flying away
flying home

superheroes
in ordinary costumes
on cell phones

working day jobs
making a living
making change 

...John Reinhart


Confessions of a Supermassive Black Hole                    

You can’t escape my body.
I deform spacetime, invisible
collapsing even as everything surrounds me.
I am the center of you, of your galaxy.
Sieving particles, radiation, light, through my skin
I search for the ghost of my former self. 
My gravity is also my weakness.

...Holly Walrath


Dwarf Regiment Marching through the Forest

Their warboots 
    shake the earth
but their helmets
    don’t even graze
the lowest branches.

...Greg Schwartz


the end
of our spaceship
romance –
too many days
stuck on the dark side
of the moon

...Susan Burch


to save space
we brought e-books
to New Earth
one by one
batteries dying

​...Lauren McBride

Today's contributor is Andrew Darlington, a poet, novelist, journalist and even a member of the "alternative cabaret/stand up poetry" circuit. You might also want to check out his website Eight Miles Higher, described as "the Blogspot for People Who Don’t Like Blogspots" Recent postings include… interview: Graham Nash Talks About The Hollies and Screamin' Jay Hawkins Puts His Spell On You’. All I can add about sat-nav is it was my encounters with the autogeddon hell that is Milton Keynes that first prompted me to invest in a sat-nav system for my car. http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.com


​Sat-Nav Dreaming: Lost On Planet X
by Andrew Darlington
​
48-hours, & my SatNav’s dreaming
plotting routes through the strange terrain
of this planet beyond the Kuiper Belt,
flip a sharp-left around the Headrow
through a hail of collapsing Stock Market suicides
across insect cities that delineate the edge of empire
when a billion ring-tones scream simultaneously,
I don’t understand where I am, or why I’m here,
this is a weirdness that doesn’t come along every day…
48-hours in my Honda Civic, with the SatNav
weaving me down narrow flea-market lanes &
the endless procession of drowned trawlermen
in post-nuclear cities radiation-shimmering,
along the wet strand where two full moons
are frozen and sand blows in ice-squalls as
staccato as the stylus crackles of a run-in groove
haunted by the phantom of Eddie Cochran,
I don’t understand how I got here,
I don’t understand this trans-Neptunian world
& I don’t understand the row of crucifixions…
I’m hunting Bob Dylan’s lost haiku
with the SatNav glitch urging me on,
its silver screen hard-wired into the
too-many problems in my head 
the valet directs me down the subway
as this deep-space night grows colder,
a girl, once in my class at infants
is now the best trick in town,
I don’t understand how she got here,
I don’t understand why I’m reminiscing
all that lost kissing, as she pours moonlight
into my eyes, I tell her I shortly have to leave
this is getting way too weird for me
I’ve already hung around this world
far longer than I should,
48-hours on Planet X, and I’m wondering,
how much, how much, how much longer

It's been a long time but the poetry section I compile for the British Science Fiction Association BSFA Focus magazine (issue #67) is now out.

Contributors include Frances W. Alexander - Susan Burch - Herb Kauderer - Andrew Darlington - Deborah L. Davitt - Amy Butt - John Calvert - Lauren McBride - Kendall Evans - Guy Belleranti - Jenny Blackford - Amy Grech - Ken Poyner.

​You can read the PDF here. 

We've an interesting mix of short poetry for you now, including a couple of tanka and a limerick, from Grievous Angel regulars Christina Sng, Herb Kauderer, Andy Brown, and Gabriel Smithwilson... 


Untitled Tanka
by Christina Sng

Mars beckons
in the near distance
as we leave Earth behind
biting into a blueberry
I water the tomatoes


Untitled Tanka
by Herb Kauderer
 
Buck Rogers buildings
recall long ago futures
turning ghosts of dreams
into fashions drunk on fumes
of old rockets and jetpacks


Fantasy Limerick
by Andy Brown

Young Jenny had upset a witch
By calling the woman a bitch
The hag cast a spell
Which made the girl smell
And gave her an intimate itch


Summer Project
by Gabriel Smithwilson           

In still-warm midnight hour
Pink Floyd instrumental
Snaking deftly through static
On the garage radio
One last strange piece
Is put into place
And like a solar flare
In neon shades
The homemade flying saucer
Has come to life

Two new poems – Reboot City and Who Was That Masked Woman? – for you now from Ian Hunter. Ian is a children's author, short story writer, poet, editor and occasional book reviewer. He's a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle, a director of the Scottish writers collective Read Raw, and poetry editor of the British Fantasy Society Journal.


Reboot City

I am the girlfriend
Sometimes the girl next door
Exchanging glances
Awkward moments
We almost got married
I’ve been kidnapped several times
Even died, once

I am the police commissioner
Who never gets to retire
Sometimes doddering
Sometimes overweight
Sometimes steely, like my moustache
Once I’ve been black
I might be a woman next

I am the sidekick
My parents are dead
A suspicious road accident
or horribly murdered by a masked fiend
but I had my revenge
even though it killed me
Then I came back, as a girl

I am the hero
I never age
I never change
I can never escape this life
All these reboots
No wonder,  I hate this city
almost as much
as I hate myself


Who Was That Masked Woman?

I unblock the vacuum cleaner
She prevents a North Sea oil spillage

I hang out the washing
She stops a runaway train

I do the weekly shopping
She frees a whale from shallow water

I make the children’s school lunches
She holds up a broken bridge

I paint the kitchen ceiling
She diverts the lava flow

I iron the school shirts 
She stops the landslide crushing the village

I attend the parent’s night
She catches the falling cable car

I make a romantic dinner for two
She grimaces at the sound of her beeper