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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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