Good Souls

Radio saxophones nibbled our ears
like pet squirrels as I turned on the heater.
Coffee! I grumbled to Delta Leo,
her riding boots propped on the dashboard.
Parked in the car by the lake, we locked
pinkies, kissed. Hah! That warmed us up,
I said, snickering. Then we saw it:
the UFO resembling a giant slot machine.
Thinking we’d resurrected to Vegas,
we sauntered to his vessel and saw him,
more handsome than any serial killer.
Hello, Earth Fuckers! the suntanned alien
boomed, interrupting our frog-eyed trance.
A rainbow beard on his bullet-headed
face masking a cross-eyed cowboy,
he smiled when Delta Leo asked,
Do you have coffee? Licking his lips,
he said, Does a farm sprout asparagus?
and handed us cups of zesty tangerine mocha
macchiato latte. Where you from? I asked.
Lumbering toward us in his nine-foot frame,
he answered, A place in our solar belt called
Heaven. Delta Leo said, Awesome!
Good souls go there after their bodies die.
He chuckled, Never say awesome! zapping us
with a yellow taser. When we woke up,
the moon shined like a spaceship rising,
rising, humming violet colors as saxophones
played Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

 

David Spicer has poems in Tipton Poetry Journal, Reed Magazine, The Literary Nest, Chiron Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Oddball Magazine, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks; his latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press).

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.