Another Self-Righteous Artist

Jeanie was an artist from Outer Space.

She woke up everyday to sculpt, paint,
play the cello, tell stories.
Her other worldly creations filled public land,
the homes of prominent earthlings.

Her work was published; performances were given.
Interviews were televised, picked up on the radio.
Scholars studied and taught her.
Others thought she was a fake.

At night, underneath western skies,
she took orders from Protoplast,
a planetary archetype looking to expand.
She was a secret agent of sorts.

Up above, the universe was at war.
Prototypical simulacrums advance towards
the Milky Way. Sent to destroy the Human Race,
the clones of Protoplast feel like stepchildren.

Jeanie hated all that wasn’t Earthly.
She broke all of the cosmic windows and
covered them with extraterrestrial lies,
plastered over black holes.

The day before both sides destroyed her,
she gave the world her greatest creation.

The end of it.

Outbreak

Miles left the gathering of zookeepers and
headed home. It had been the worst meeting

in his twenty-six years tending
to the captured wild.

Cindy, an intern, had contracted
Dodo flu from a traveling petrified cough.

Sanctuaries threatened to close.
Vets called in sick, locked their doors.

Miles pulled into his driveway and
got out of his car.

As he got to the porch, he fumbled
with his keys. To his right, Miles

noticed a blur crashing towards him.
A newly hatched butterfly died on his nose.

Inside his house an aura of sadness surrounded.
Miles picked up where he had everyday before.

On television, protesters were chanting,
“Put down the gun!”

Not too Different

Two screamers argue, cobra-faced,
about the shadows of sound.
Coffee and last night’s pizza pieces
sail back-and-forth.

Joggers drag on.

The head of a songbird pleases a cat.
Hot days have the lines long
for cold rabbit stew.

The reptilian couple stop.
Braced like beggars at dawn
biding their time before
the guinea pigs arrive.

Prairie dogs burrow deep.

The dance of termites brought
cheers from a group of caribou
studying abroad. A powerful

rain came down right after the crows left.
Earth worms came out for a cleansing.

They crawled for miles
to get from under a skin paved avenue.

Hyenas stopped laughing.