David C. Kopaska-Merkel is the editor of Dreams and Nightmares and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's journal, Star*Line. He had sold poems and stories and reviews to many places, including Night Cry, Eldritch Tales, Xenophilia, Space and Time, and Alpha Dimension. By day he's a geologist; he's co-authored a sedimentology textbook, and published papers on trilobites, oil and gas reservoir rocks, and fossil reefs. He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-1998 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

There Never Were Any by David C. Kopaska-Merkel Lost streets, grounded whalers, red-eyed and sodden. Wet ashes, her wandering ghost, garbage, the alley stinks. Rain today is evil; like whalers who scorn the sea. Men won't work, music is dead: live like today is rain. Her ghost, her ashes, empty frames. He lets the trash pile up, pees in the doorway, lives like death. Arts are lost, the streets are ghosts, there are no whales