Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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Them

by Stephen Jarrell Williams


Starships in the sky coming for us
running like dogs hanging our tongues,
heads bowed to the ground.

They're announcing down to us of their return.
They spit us into existence centuries ago,
wanting to help us purge ourselves
with their veggie ray and pimple popper.

I haven't seen them yet, but I know
they're smiling with too many teeth,
big lizard eyes, hidden tails under their capes.

Promising us
we'll never have to work again,
just sit around the pool with a Pepsi.

All this time they've been away,
letting us stir our own pot of bones
past the boiling point.

Many of us stopping, looking up for a reward.
But I don't believe
them.

I keep running into the woods
smelling the opening
assholes of their ships.


© 2010 Stephen Jarrell Williams

Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Aoife's Kiss, Aphelion, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Chronogram Magazine, Deuce Coupe, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, Heroin Love Songs, Hungur, Is This Reality, Kalkion, Liquid Imagination, Mad Swirl, Metazen, Mirror Dance, Neonbeam, Nerve Cowboy, Nomad's Choir, POEM, Poesia, Posey, protestpoems.org, Purpose, REAL, Rusty Truck, Scifaikuest, Sex And Murder, Shoots And Vines, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Thieves Jargon, Zygote In My Coffee, and others.

Find more by Stephen Jarrell Williams in the Author Index.

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