Alan Catlin- Three Poems

The Progeny

The academic subjects she

showed the most aptitude for

were chemistry and biology.

Not that she’d actually studied

either. School was for dipshits,

everyone knew that.  As an

apprentice in the family business,

making meth in home cooking,

trailer trash rigs, she’d aced

all her prelims, moved from basics

to high level work, until she knew

all there was to know.  In between

courses, by the age of 13, the age

of consent in her neck of the woods,

consent being a relative concept,

she started dropping kids, six,

maybe seven, but who was counting?

They were all sallow faced, malnourished

things, some so dreadfully pale and

with tainted yellow eyes, people

wondered if they were of human born. 

Not that she could say much about

their origins, having only been there

in a physical sense at the time of their

conception.  A couple of generations

down the line, genetics would reveal all:

cretins or aliens, it would all be

the same to her.

Alien Sex

According to published

reports, UFO sightings

skyrocketed following

sputnik launch and release

of a steady proliferation

of science fiction movies

featuring beings from outer

space.  Attendant abduction

stories involving undocumented,

unverifiable close encounters

of a sexual kind, caused cynical

observers to remark, “ Given

what these folks look like,

it’s the only kind of sex they

could get.  Most of them couldn’t

flag down a bull in a tightly

closed ring.”  Who knows what

an alien finds attractive? 

How long it had been?

The Thing

The guy who did stats for

the local rag said he was

officially listed as seven foot

four and a half inches and weighed

three forty-five. He could have

played in the NBA, if he could

have shot, run or dribbled a

basketball.  All of which went

a long way to explaining why he

was marooned on one of the outer

moons of Jupiter playing minor

league basketball, which was what

Albany was to pro hoops in terms

of the NBA. The way he picked up

a pitcher of beer and absorbed it in

his hand, was the way mere mortals

handled a shot glass.  After inhaling

three or four of  those, he claimed

to have arm wrestled Andre the Giant

and the guy who played the original Hulk

and won, a dubious claim no one was

about to challenge.  A few more snorts

of suds and he looked ready to audition

for a starring role as the title character

in yet another bad remake of “The Thing

from Outer Space”.  He wouldn’t even

need makeup.