Aliens

By Paul Genega
Read by Patrick Rosal

The night the Martians landed
in Grovers Mills, New Jersey
fear took my father east
all the way to Montauk Point.
Like automatic pilot,
cruise control at ninety —
except his car didn't even
have a Philco on the dash.

I've heard the tale so often
it almost feels like mine.
Careening from doomed Brooklyn
in a black coupe locked like sleep,
past dreams of withered farms,
shingled fishing towns,
scrub oak, sand and pines...
a silent ride, thought frozen,
driven more than driving
till he came to land's end
and the sea slapped him awake.

And there stood Montauk Light
swinging its white blades,
trying to slice the night
into manageable pieces.
And higher up, the stars,
a young man's map of romance,
the fate he'll someday master,
turned suddenly a pox,
each speck untold disaster.

Propped against a bearded rock,
huddled from the wind,
he lit a blue-tipped match,
a little SOS, a minute spark
at the edge of the known world,
and wondered, as men wonder,
as I have wondered too —

What the hell should I do now?
Where in hell do I go now?
Who will come and save me now?

But no one came, of course.
Except for guilt —
in a flash he saw his mother,
my aunts, then gawky kids,
the four of them crouched
in the back bedroom in Bay Ridge.
The airwell window breaking,
a green claw inching closer...
And all he could do
was hold his own damp skin.
All father could do
was hold his own damned skin.

* * *
It wasn't until dawn,
a rising salt-stained fog,
that hunger took over
and ripped him from that rock.
At a cafe in the village
over homefries and poached eggs,
the waitress informed him
the whole thing was a hoax,
just a Halloween prank.
And she laughed at him,
she laughed, laughed so hard
he thought her eyes
would drop into the plate.

It was 1938 —
in father's words,
the last good year for laughter.
I would not arrive
until a decade later.
But neither of us ever was
the same from that point on.

Credits

Directed by Williams Cole.

"Aliens" from Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023 (Salmon, 2024).