2016Bluestone

20 Million Miles to Earth Ace Boggess

Columbia Pictures Morningside Productions, 1957 So meek, I’d cuddle it were my arms like highways. Even big, it’s still a baby, days out of its gelatinous sack. Though it looms over buildings, trees, a tank spewing fire, we are the monsters. We kidnap, then try to kill it. Listen to it scream (IMDB says elephant sounds distorted) like a rusted engine searching for a spark. It’s we who must pay: we the abductors, we the bloody-handed. What did we ever offer but our crimes? Run, child, before we set the dogs on you. Here, it’s never safe to be a stranger. Ace Boggess is author of two books of poetry, including most recently, The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014), with a novel, A Song without a Melody, forthcom- ing in 2016 from Hyperborea Publishing.

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