A professional cattle tuner falls for a beautiful clothesline sander. A member of the resistance warns his confederates of the efficacy of a new decimal collector. Genetically modified corn goes rogue. A man exhausts his quota of words and has to seek more on the black market. A superhero retires to a remote village, where he grows weary of being asked to find missing cattle. A generic android goes for a night's fling before he is to be customized the next day. A collection of brief fictions advancing the strange and unexpected. Ken Poyner has published more than 200 stories and 1200 poems in more than 200 journals and magazines, both print and web based. His books include "Cordwood" (poetry), 1985; "Sciences, Social" (poetry), 1995; "Constant Animals" (fictions), 2013; "The Book of Robot"; (poetry), 2016; "Victims of a Failed Civics"; (poetry), 2016; "Avenging Cartography"; (fictions), 2017; "The Revenge of the House Hurlers" (fictions), 2018; and more, with his latest being speculative poetry in "Lessons From Lingering Houses", 2022. He has taught creative writing on a Poets in the Schools Virginia teaching fellowship; and given readings, or taught seminars, at Bucknel University, George Washington University, the Bethesda Writers Center, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for multiple Pushcart prizes, multiple Rhysling and Dwarf Stars awards, the Sidewise award, and several Best of the Net awards. His work appears in a number of contemporary anthologies. He is known for his surreal and Irreal topics and methods.
