Mars Attacks

painting by frank frazetta

Mars Attacks

Point Defiance pokes up
like a battered thumb
or an arthritic middle finger
into the southern eye of
Puget Sound.

There is a spacious city park
that spreads out like a green
band aid covering the tip, that
contains a resurrected Hudson’s
Bay fort, five kinds of gardens,
a ferry terminal, a rocky beach,
and deep within the chest of
the thin peninsula, a zoo,

where I went today, anxious to
rekindle my childish sense of
wonder, wanting to create a digital
record of
t
i
g
e
r’
s
eyes,
red wolf’s mane,
Indian elephant back hair,
arctic fox pups,
and otter’s wet kisses;

but instead I found filthy cages,
greasy smeared glass windows,
a cold breeze off the bay,
a shaggy menagerie of captives--
their eyes brimming with sadness
and arrogant lethargy, their fur muddy
and matted, scores of empty cages
with yellow tape covering the doors,
overpriced nachos and lollipops,
and thirty staircases, lousy lighting,
darkly tinted glass, broken bannisters,
hundreds of snot-nosed screaming
pre-adolescents being jerked, pushed,
carried and herded mostly by
stay-at-home mothers,

starring a myriad of caged creatures
that preferred turning their various backs
toward the impish faces pressed to glass,
leering over low fences, their chocolate-
streaked fingers pointing proudly;

until I had a free-floating epiphany,
and everything became a Martian zoo,
the animals becoming the public
with the people on exhibit, drenching
me in interstellar panic as I held
my breath while rushing toward
the exit gate.

Glenn Buttkus

February 2012


Listed as #12 over on dVerse Poets-Martian Verse

Would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?