Today’s Poem
Scorched Earth --Elizabeth Rees
I was watching my zealot neighbor picking individual zoysia blades at dusk when it occurred to me there was no way he would ever be able to disguise that UFO scar on his front yard. He could subscribe to every right-wing rag but he could not deny his perfect zoysia grass had been scorched by a spaceship. I thought about drones awhile,
watched him under my eyelashes for another good hour. I wondered how he explained the chemistry of this burn. He was an engineer, after all. Even if he plucked grass in the dark, he probably didn’t believe in poetry or outer space.
But I’d seen them land in the viscera of night. They flew in from the right, the far right, with birches in their hands. I’d seen them unload their shovels and dirt. I’d heard the yowl in their eyes, smelled the sweat of their plans. They were serious, and sure they could not be stopped.
Soon, others would come, alien multitudes in a strident shield of color, fisting the air with rage, howling words my neighbor doesn’t know, though they speak the same language.
