Under the Skin
She’s unnaturally pale: icy
and distant. Obviously from someplace
else, a not-of-this world accent,
cruising back roads for hitchhikers,
down on their luck loners one
drink away from a heart attack
machine. When she walks into an along-
the-side –of- the-roadhouse everything stops,
even the juke box, all eyes on her
like hands with a license to touch.
Claims to be lost, and she is,
but not the way people imagine.
Chooses a man to provide more precise
details for an M8 motorway,
dual carriage drive, three planets
and a solar system from where she
needs to be. Asks them to show her
the way, gives off this strange vibe
men misinterpret as an invitation
for sex, disrobe in what passes for
her pad, feel her hands on them
leaving black widow marks on
their skin, tiny pin pricks venom fills,
leaving them cold and lifeless,
ready for the web, a harvest of flesh.
The Local
Climbing the narrow walking
path,
The Local points to
where
the crop circle appeared last
year,
says he met some Americans
like us,
last year, who were here from
Kansas,
who said they made the
journey near
the Summer Solstice, like us,
to be closer
to the UFO's that seem more
frequent
in warmer
weather.
His companion checks out the
Neolithic
burial chamber we were
climbing
to see, says, "It's walking
into the woman's
vagina, that is, the mound
opening.
Each of the interior cavities
represents
different parts of her body:
the arms, legs
and head." I was tempted to
ask,
"What about the glass windows in
the antechambers? Are they
mirrors to
the soul or
what?"
But I bite my
tongue.
Questions might spoil The
Local's monologue
about Crop Circles, UFO
Landings
International Conspiracies,
Cover Ups,
and all that good stuff. He's
into juicy
stuff like, "Silbury Hill is
a landing area
for space ships & other
UFO's.
Everyone around here knows
that,
all this stuff about a shaft
collapse
during the last monsoon is
just government
nonsense." When he notices my
hearing aid,
he knows I'm listening but he
can't be sure
to what, or, whom I might
represent
and backs away, tongue tied
now,
fearing the
worst.
Beam Me Up
Scottie
After the
initial
tricorder
readings
revealed no
intel-
ligent life
forms
all that
followed
should have
been
water
flowing
downhill but
they
kept coming in
the bar as if
there
was a high
powered
cloning
machine
cranking out
replicants
at an
accelerating
pace, one that
threatened
to take over the
bar,
the street, maybe
even
the town like
some
kind of,
happening-
right-now-extended
play movie in real
life
of the Body
Snatchers
grafted onto Star Trek
V
The Final
Frontier,
the episode
where
the transporter
room
fails to do its
thing
& everyone left
behind
on this hostile
planet
dies.
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