Observation

Extraterrestrials in a sleek silver vessel

slowly flew over the town of landlocked Ridgedale, Illinois,

and hovered over the subdivision of Bayside Lakes,

which was built around a small retention pond

next to a clubhouse for homeowners’ association meetings.

All of the streets were named after nautical concepts,

like Anchor, Regatta, Hightide, and Surf,

and all of the townhouses were identical,

with beige vinyl siding and uniform mailboxes at the curb.

It was 3:35 on a Tuesday morning,

and all the residents were asleep,

except for April Jenkins,

who had just let out her corgi, Dennis.

And only Dennis, while relieving his bladder,

was aware of these outsiders,

who floated noiselessly above his home,

their motives unknown.

And so Dennis barked

and barked,

full-throated, deep barks,

punctuated by protective growls.

But Dennis barked like that all the time

for no good reason,

and so April, half-asleep, 

opened the door and shouted,

“Dennis! Be quiet! Come inside!”

Dennis reluctantly retreated into his home,

and the ship vanished,

on its way to its home world,

faster than light,

to report its findings about the lush Planet Earth

and its complex civilization of carbon-based canine life.

Teeth

I held his heart in my bloody gloved hand,

my face drawn closer to it,

this strange cut of meat you’d get at the butcher shop,

pumping like an obedient machine just outside of his body.

It had an aorta and veins and arteries,

atria and ventricles, all in the right places.

The inner walls of this muscle were, however,

studded with sharp white teeth, hundreds of them.

It was where his soul resided.

What I Remember from Math Class

Pi is that 3.14 number, and it just goes on and on.

You use pi to find the area of a circle. 

In eighth grade Sister Rose made us memorize the quadratic formula.

 

(this image is fuzzy like my memory)

I have no idea when one would use the quadratic formula.

In geometry class, we had to write out a bunch of proofs,

to make sure that shit that mathematicians have known

since the days of the ancient Greeks is still true.

Sine and Cosine and Tangent…they are ratios of some sort.

You use them for trigonometry.

You do derivatives in calculus, but I don’t remember why.

In real life I can do basic arithmetic to balance my checkbook

and proportions to figure out how many minutes 

it takes me to jog a mile.

I calculate percentages for tips,

but I zone out when it’s time to split the bill at a restaurant.

Most important of all, I use fractions for baking,

like when I can’t find the 1/4 cup,

so I scoop out 2/8 of a cup of flour instead.

Life Diamante

Health

Power, strength, energy, life

A freedom you don’t appreciate until it’s gone

A divine gift—you don’t get to choose the where, when, or how

Painful separation, inevitable, the unhappy ending

Peaceful rest, the new beginning

Death

Discontinued: A Found Poem of Lost Crayon Colors

Celestial century

Pewter shadow

Polished pine

Frostbite

Sea serpent liberty

Sunken Sahara tumbleweed

Axle grease

Mummy’s tomb

Muscle shell

Freshly squeezed Grandma’s perfume

Hedgehog bubble bath

Atomic tulip jellybean

Ravenous deep space

Cosmic midnight gloom

Ocean floor peace dove

Peacock circuit board

Sunshiny seahorse

Sizzling mercury milky way

Savage Joy

With a savage joy,

he showed me his freshly painted scars,

and I said, whoa, man,

you’ve got problems,

you really should talk to somebody,

it’s not 1998 anymore.

Put some pants on.

Maybe try to get a job.

Work Week

Monday I forgot that project was due

Tuesday I got some negative feedback too

Wednesday was the team meeting where I burst into tears

I went to a TGI Friday’s and had a few beers

Thursday I was hungover and came to work tired

Friday afternoon I was told I was fired

Saturday night, I erased the company’s hard drive

Sunday morning I drank a mimosa and never felt so alive.

Pyramid

The tomb has long since been plundered,

only dusty cavities now 

where gold and jewels once adorned

the statues of discarded gods.

Crunching beneath your boots 

as you slowly, cautiously trod the cool stone floor,

the ground littered with shards of clay jars.

Although the sarcophagus is empty,

the wrapped body having been stolen and sold,

you are not alone here.

On every wall, you are surrounded

by pharaohs and servants,

farmers, sailors, hunters, merchants,

scarabs, ibises and falcons,

the piercing eye of Horus,

Anubis with his black jackal head,

busy with his mortician’s work.

Not far behind you,

something that has been sleeping

for thousands of years

suddenly opens and then narrows its eyes.

Shaky Verb Tenses

My future self will travel to the past,

about three years before now,

so that I could leave myself a note,

that I would only find just today.

It reads,

“It all depends on this.

Leave that Pomeranian alone.”

But my future self will miscalculate

the date when this fatal encounter would occur

and had given it to me two years too early.

At the appropriate time the confusing message

will be disregarded and forgotten.

The disturbed Pomeranian

will exact its revenge upon me,

leading to a domino-effect catastrophe

that will overthrow the U.S. government

and decimate the city of Omaha, Nebraska.

My future self, 

ten years after the apocalypse,

will realize that nothing had changed,

and my plan had failed

and wondered if perhaps 

I had planted the seeds of destruction

in the note I had hastily written to my past self.

I will then decide that the past is inevitable,

(or is it the future that is inevitable?)

and to live more meaningfully 

in the smoldering ruins of the present.

The traffic won’t be so bad then, after all,

and wooly mammoths will have made a real comeback.

Facemasks

The disposable facemask

lying forlornly on the ground

in the parking lot,

used, abandoned, perhaps even hated.

Tossed carelessly between cars

like a used condom or fast food wrapper.

It doesn’t look like some kind of torture device.

It looks thin, inexpensive, medical, utilitarian.

So many Facebook posts, written in all caps.

So many viral videos of people screaming at weary store managers.

Such resistance

for such a small thing.

So many lives saved,

begrudgingly.

Malediction

I bought a cursed coffee mug

from a small, cluttered store

in New Orleans,

you know, the kind with incense 

and crystals and supposed

voodoo talismans.

It was a simple white coffee cup,

imprinted with various local attractions,

and I don’t normally go for touristy stuff,

but this cup called to me,

and somehow,

though I couldn’t really explain it,

I had to have it.

And it was $4.95,

so it was a pretty good deal.

Its cursed nature manifested itself

not long after I returned home

and started using the cup.

Kitchen cabinets started opening by themselves.

Dishes and utensils suddenly appeared 

in the wrong cabinets and drawers.

Once, I filled the coffee cup with cool water

that immediately started boiling

as the cup sat on the counter.

I had troubling dreams too,

dreams of laughing demons 

telling me I was damned,

visions of an angry elderly woman

with a slit throat,

opening her mouth to scream,

but no sound ever came out.

I’ve tried explaining this to people,

but they don’t really believe me,

not even my psychiatrist,

who prescribes me yet another sleeping pill.

I could try to throw it away, 

but it really is the best coffee cup I have.

The perfect thickness of the lip,

the pleasingly textured finish,

the ample depth.

Plus, you can put it in the dishwasher

or the microwave.

Blizzard

For five days straight,

the thick heavy wet white flakes

tumbled down recklessly,

inconsiderately,

never letting up even for a minute.

and school was closed,

and offices were closed,

and restaurants and stores,

and everything was closed,

except for that 24-hour pancake place,

but how could you even get there?

And the only way I figured they stayed open

was that the owner who worked in the front,

his kids who ran the kitchen,

and that waitress with the smoker’s cough

just never left the restaurant that whole time.

If I opened my front door,

I faced an eight-foot wall of solid snow,

packed in tight and frozen hard.

I had to chisel out a tunnel

just so my dog could take a shit,

but it was a wasted effort.

She spent her brief time outside

whining, confused,

poking her nose 

into the walls of the snow cavern

around her,

then she got too cold and started crying,

and held up her right front paw helplessly,

so I had to carry her back in,

and she crapped on the floor immediately.

And I knew this storm was coming,

everyone knew this storm was coming,

but I wasn’t sure that I had enough food

because it wasn’t supposed to go on this long

and the snow wasn’t supposed to get this high,

and what if the power goes out?

Then we’d be screwed.

So every day,

I worked for a few hours on my tunnel,

trying to dig out a little farther,

hoping to join someone else’s tunnel,

and my hands were cold and numb,

and my feet, despite my boots,

felt cold and wet.

I heard that Paul,

the idiot who lives down the street,

got out on his roof

and tried to jump down onto the top

of the huge snow bank.

He survived,

wasn’t really hurt at all,

surprisingly,

considering he’s usually drunk

and never wearing a shirt.

Reply All

Some of us knowingly snickered

when we saw the email titled “Dress Code” in our inboxes.

One of those “friendly reminders” that Yasmin often sent,

not singling anyone out, but you knew there was but one offender.

“Please no tank tops, flip flops, leggings, or torn jeans,” 

she demanded—gently, no admonitions or threats.

Wendy certainly meant to send her snarky reply to Nancy or Scott,

maybe even Elaine in Marketing.

But instead, she tragically selected “Reply All”

and wrote, “This is what that cow, Jessica,

is wearing Right. Now. She hasn’t worn real pants in six months.

Her shirts never even cover her ass!

Must be nice to be a VP’s niece.”

This was followed by a number of laughing and vomiting emojis.

The normal buzz of the office slowly died,

as everyone, office-wide, read this electronic missive.

A sickly silence, punctuated by some shocked murmurs

and wide-eyed whispers hidden behind hands.

And Wendy, when she realized what she had done,

was so distraught that her body temperature rose uncontrollably,

causing her to flush and sweat.

Dizzy with embarrassment and fever,

she whimpered, “I don’t feel so well,”

then literally melted into a puddle of liquid flesh, blood and viscera

right at her desk, a cloud of steam rising above what had been our coworker.

There were screams and gasps, and someone set off the fire alarm.

We stood outside our building, shedding tears and exchanging hugs.

Steve made sure to get a good look at her remains

and had a small audience gathered around him,

describing what was left of her shoes, her hair.

Jess walked right past us to her car,

drove away and never returned.

Wendy’s whole workstation had to be replaced,

and only the most temporary of interns were assigned that space.

Several days later, we received an email from Yasmin,

entitled, “Wendy Yates Memorial Details and New Email Policy.”

Tumbling

I’ve been falling in my dreams lately.

I don’t know what the context is.

I’m just plummeting, the world a blur,

my stomach somewhere in my throat.

Nothing to grab at to slow my descent.

And I really feel it,

I really feel myself falling,

so I call out in a panic,

“helphelphelphelphelphelphelp!”

And my husband gets annoyed,

because I’ve just woken him up

and terrified him with my cries,

but I’m actually fine,

just lying there on my back.

And when I am about to crash land,

my eyes flutter open,

but I don’t feel safe,

not for the rest of the day.

My Favorite Sweater

I’ve probably had it about twenty years now,

my favorite sweater.

It is the color of cinnamon, chili powder,

tart cherries, the leaves of the Japanese maple.

It’s thick and warm and protects me well from the slicing wind.

But it’s a zip-up hoodie,

so it also can be easily removed

when the afternoon sun streams in 

hot and bright through the window,

and my back starts to sweat.

My first dog, Cleo, chewed up the bottoms of the pockets,

after I had accidentally left dog treats there.

So I can’t carry anything in my favorite sweater,

and I travel light.

Breathe

Having crash-landed on the small blue planet,
full of life but short on intelligence,
Rakmar felt very alone.
He stared up at a light blue sky, 
dotted with white clouds,
so very different from the reddish-orange atmosphere
stretching over his home world.
He knew that no one here could speak his language,
biologically could not speak his language, that is,
due to a lack of speech appendages.
No one here could see this world the way he could,
could perceive the colors he saw,
would know the ancient stories of his tribe and nation,
would understand the mechanisms
that lifted his ship high into the heavens,
traveling faster than starlight.

With no way to communicate with his own kind,
Rakmar focused on survival,
keeping his breathing apparatus functioning
(for he did not know whether he could inhale this alien air
and survive),
rationing his food supplies,
and staying hidden from the dominant ones,
the short bipedal creatures who traveled in wheeled vehicles
with filthy internal combustion engines
and spent most of their time staring at small handheld devices,
the purpose of which Rakmar had not yet discovered.

One evening, as the nearest star set at the western horizon,
his favorite time of day,
when the flaming oranges, pinks, and violets
made the sky appear, briefly, like that on his home planet,
Rakmar realized that his breathing apparatus 
had ceased to function,
and he did not have the appropriate tools and supplies to repair it.
So he removed his helmet,
exposing his face for the first time to this strange new air,
and deeply inhaled.

Menagerie

After years of worrying about global warming and meteor strikes
and pandemics and war and terrorism and wildfires and exploding frogs,
humans forgot to worry about what would occur during an alien invasion,
what would happen when they trounced our pitiful attempts at resistance,
what would happen when they killed billions of us
and put the rest of us in zoos across the galaxy.

I was put in the Morgloch Research and Living Habitat Facility,
somewhere many millions of light years away from Earth,
away from everyone I had ever known in my old life,
and in an exhibit with about twenty other humans
and one misidentified Grodothian.
We were fed well,
had a large living space
with several communal homes,
a rough approximation 
of what humans would want for themselves in a shelter,
but the Keepers didn’t really ask us our opinions.
There were no interior walls in our homes,
not even around what I’ll call the bathroom,
but it’s fine,
we made do with what we got.
We had a park with some lovely oaks and maples and green Earth grass,
but also some pink puffy trees that seemed to be covered in fur.
These trees had eyes, and they breathed loudly through their trunks.
It’s nice that they gave us the spot for recreation,
but they weren’t really fooling anyone.

We were supposed to all be friends in our exhibit, I guess.
They wanted for us to pair off and reproduce.
And I think their experiment was largely a success,
except for me.
I looked at my fellow humans and the one Grodothian,
and I saw greedy, grasping beasts,
fighting every day over our daily rations,
even though there was always more than enough,
and we could probably have asked for more, if we really wanted it.
Like you’d find in a seventh grade classroom,
there was a strict social hierarchy.
Or it’s probably more accurate to say that it was a solar system, 
with Chase Goodwin and Miriam Roskell as twin stars
and the rest of us orbiting them at varying distances.
Surprisingly, the Grodothian was closer to them than anyone else,
but I was Pluto,
icy, distant,
not even considered a planet.

Diana Cho and I kind of paired off for a while, as friends.
We laughed at our fellow captives,
their pitiful attempts at maintaining some kind of control in their lives,
their “house rules,”
their “negotiations” with the Keepers.
Then something happened.
I still don’t know what.
Maybe it was something I said,
or something I did,
or something I didn’t do,
but Diana started avoiding me.
She and Miriam were the ones laughing now,
and if I caught her eye,
she’d give me the same look
you might give to a centipede scurrying in the bathtub
or that container of leftovers in the back of your fridge,
the one you don’t even remember putting in there,
its contents now green and grey and white and furry.
And that was the end of that.

The Keepers removed me from the exhibit one day
and used their invasive methods to communicate with me
and asked me why I “wasn’t integrating.”
“I don’t know,” I told them, honestly.
“We just don’t get along.”
The Keepers didn’t understand.
We were all the same species
(they still hadn’t realized their mistake about the Grodothian),
from the same part of our home planet, even.
We spoke the same language,
weren’t that far apart in age,
and were free to mate in whatever combinations we preferred.
What could possibly be the problem?
“Some people are just better off by themselves,” I said.
“I’ve always been like that.
Even before you all…arrived, 
I wasn’t that good at making friends,
and I never dated anyone for very long.”
The Keepers were unsatisfied with this explanation,
and I was informed I was to be immediately transferred 
to the Ferlanian Living Habitat,
located in a different galaxy.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Diana Cho,
but I wasn’t that broken up about it.

When I arrived at my new home,
I realized there had been some mistake.
I was in an exhibit full of Grodothians,
but it wound up being okay, actually.
They were accepting and welcoming,
and we all had a lot in common.
So it was better than I thought it would be,
about as good as anyone could expect.

Tempest

Everyone had a bad year in 2020,
but Ryan was particularly afflicted.
After being struck by lightning on a golf course,
he died for 42 seconds
before being shocked back to life,
and then it turned out
he could create weather systems
just above his head,
but he couldn’t control this ability very well.
“You’re destroying my home!” 
his young wife shrieked,
fed up with the rain ruining her hardwood floors
in the living room,
the tornado that ripped apart the master bathroom,
sending her prized claw-footed white bathtub
flying into a neighbor’s home,
the blizzard in the bedroom
that buried the carpet under two feet of snow.
They had received nasty letters
from the homeowners’ association
and denials of claims from their insurance company.
“You just can’t live here anymore,”
his wife sadly told him.
“Not until they figure out how to fix…
your problem.”
“But where am I to go?” he cried,
his arms outstretched in a beseeching posture.
But she had no answer for him.
“I told you it was stupid to go golfing.”
She finally said it.
“With the pandemic and everything…”
“It was outside!” he cried.
“Brett and I barely talked to each other,
and we didn’t even use our flasks!”
There was a loud clap of thunder above them both,
and his wife silently pointed at the door.
They say that Ryan spent the rest of that year
living in a tent,
camping out from place to place,
eventually evicted by the police
when he caused flash floods, damaging hail, derechos
and, famously, one particularly violent haboob.
He’d stand defiantly in the middle of his storms,
holding out his arms in a Jesus pose,
hoping that if he could once again be struck by lightning,
this gift could be returned.

Cold Water

The sudden plunge.
Water in your ears and your eyes,
rushing down your throat.
You cough, choke, struggle to rise.
Your clothes, soaked, weigh you down.
Your warmth is defenseless against the icy current,
it carries your breath and your body away.
Your heart is shocked into a new, uneven rhythm.
Panic as you flail your limbs,
search for buoyancy.
Cold water is the look in his eyes,
the sensation of his hand pressed firmly to your back,
the forceful push,
the abrupt end.

Tea Time

The kettle screaming,
the steam perfumed by cardamom and cinnamon.
A splash of cold milk,
a swirling white galaxy.
Warm your hands, fix your soul.