Five More New Poems

In my never ending search for paying poetry markets, I came across one yesterday new to me called Scifaikuest, an e-zine dedicated to short form Japanese poetry but with a sci-fi or horror twist (http://samsdotpublishing.com/scifaikuest/cover.htm).  It only pays a dollar or two per poem, but the rate per word is actually at the professional level.  The magazine publishes the following forms:

- Haiku but with a sci-fi or horror theme, also called "scifaiku"

- Senryu:  "a haiku-like poem of a humorous or satirical nature dealing with human matters," which again, for this market, must have a sci-fi or horror theme

- Tanka:  like a haiku, but with a fourth and fifth line each 7 syllables in length (5-7-5-5-7-7)

I composed five new poems with Scifaikuest in mind:

Hydrocarbon snow:  a scifaiku about Saturn's moon Titan.

A Living Protein:  my first ever tanka, its subject is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease).

Pointing and Laughing:  my first ever senryu, it speaks to the irony that people sometimes laugh when they are feeling insecure or frightened.

Particle or Wave:  a re-working of my free-form poem, Photon, into the haiku form.  I think I may like it better as haiku.

Coagulation:  A 3-word, 5-7-5 scifaiku that describes the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis.  As a lover of minimalist poetry, I am particularly proud of this one.  I started by writing down all of the 5 and 7 syllable words I could think of.  After a while, I started to see a pattern in the words, and a poem emerged.