11/14/2010

by Jeffrey Park

November 14, 2010:
the day the Martians came
and the Venusians, the Jovians
the Neptunians and Uranians.
And the Plutonians, in no
mood to discuss just what was
and was not a full-fledged planet.
(Yes it is, no it isn’t, yes it is.)

And they stood in a ring with
many-toed feet clamped firmly
on the soil of my world, eyeing
one another, who would draw
their molecular dissociater first?
– close-up of lipless mouths,
slashed nostrils, squinty eyes
in their random twos and threes.

My neighbor and I, watching,
could only shake our heads.
How could anyone or any thing
come so far and through so many
cosmic rays just to shoot it out
for the honor of planting a flag
in some poor Earthling’s
barely tended patch of grass.