Nothing but Scifaiku - except for the Tanka

We've a bumper-bundle (a reference only people who listened to Two-Way Family Favourites ​on BBC Radio in the UK in the 1950s will get) of scifaiku for you now. Nothing but haiku, except for the tanka that is. All poet bios appear at the end. And, again for non-denizens of the UK, there is a double pun in Susan Burch's "vending machine" poem as a Galaxy is also a brand of chocolate in the UK. Enjoy!


Metal Astronomer

Orion rising
robot's lens
pressed to the eye of a telescope    

by Kendall Evans    


snickers bar –
in the vending machine
that's out of order...
a galaxy
far far away
 
why won’t she
text me back?
the temperature
on Mars
drops again
 
alien proof –
I wake up with crop circles
on my va-jay-jay

by Susan Burch


Blissful silence –
her yipping terrier
out the airlock.
 
Left behind,
the last ship
leaving the horizon.

First breath of winter,
my bed becomes a portal,
out of the ice world.

by Samantha Renda 


The Ingenious Engine Stops
 
A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. ...William Carlos Williams
 
sophisticated technology
relying on short-lived batteries:
our brief span – eternal irony
 
De-Scribe
 
pencil and paper
artifacts of an early
digital age

by Pat Tompkins


alien flyby
wondering why
the fourth planet
is no longer blue
but rust-red

root cellar
the bodies age
nicely

sheets flapping
my childhood fear
of ghosts reignites

by Christina Sng


the music 
of a stellar nursery – 
radio emissions 

plopping through 
the planet's sandy rings – 
so many fractals 
     
by Francis W. Alexander

 
Our Haikuists:

Kendall Evans' poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov's SF, Mythic Delirium, Dreams & Nightmares, Weird Tales, and numerous other science fiction and fantasy publications. 

Susan Burch says she likes to write haiku, senryu, tanka, and sedoka. She has been published in magazines such as Ribbons, Frogpond, Moongarlic, and Bones and enjoys drinking Coca-Cola Slurpees.

Samantha Renda divides her time between writing poetry and researching towards her Masters degree in Zoology in the Kalahari. Much like her academic writing, she feels that most of the poetry she pens wants burning. Sometimes a good one slips through. 

Pat Tompkins is an editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her short sci-fi poems have appeared in several issues of Dwarf Stars. She adds "I'm not quite a Luddite, but I don't do social media or have a blog or website."

Christina Sng is a Rhysling-nominated poet and writer. Her work has received Honourable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She is the author of several haiku chapbooks, including Catku (Allegra Press, 2016) and A Constellation of Songs (Allegra Press, 2016). Her first full-length collection, Astropoetry from Alban Lake Publishing is out New Year’s Day 2017. 

​Francis Wesley Alexander was born and lives in Sandusky, Ohio. He has had stories and poems published in The Martian Wave, Night to Dawn, Scifiakuest, Space and Time, The Drabbler Anthologies; A Robot, A Cyborg, & A Martian Walk Into A Space Bar, the Zombified II Anthology, and numerous other publications.