THE PURSUIT

by Alejandro Escudé

Once I thought it was Nietzsche’s

Übermensch crawling up the Minority

Leader’s arm, a furry man, but no 

Sasquatch, a green hue around it.

But then I came to realize it was

Aristotle, his arched beetle back 

On the President’s shoulders, 

having lapped up the milk of logic. 

A stone cave for a poet to live in

and call out of, the trees out there

appearing as just so many lies.

One enters a labyrinth of razors

in the city, having been cooped up

in the house for many months.

Ever noticed that driving fast

is a form of geekiness? I sink

into a neutral speed, observing,

as Whitman did, the dead grass

of the center median. Airliners

crisscross the sky at different

depths of air. Nothing collides.

People only collide with them-

selves these days. Conflict, if 

it takes place at all, takes place

in whispers over false transoms. 

At night, looking up at the stars,

one sees no nature, only an urban

concentration of skyscrapers

formed of galaxies, planet rings

on-ramps and off-ramps, screams

suppressed by cynical tweets, 

statues masking WiFi towers.

I’ve been wrong before, but not

about this. Truth is dead because

truth is romantic. I bring you

to the end of this long car chase

and I bail out, a chopper over me,

its lights illuminating the way 

in or out of the television screen.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

PANDEMIC

by Tricia Knoll

US updates travel warning to China to highest level as mayor of Wuhan admits authorities were too slow in releasing information about virus. Photo: medical teams in Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province, treat a patient as Beijing records its first death. (Chine Nouvelle/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock) —The Guardian, January 28, 2020

Fifty years ago I wrote science fiction,
one manuscript about a pandemic killing
nearly everyone except the elusive
sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest
and tribes of women wearing cedar
robes who lived in far-flung outposts.

I heard those 1918 stories. The missing
grandfather of an old man, the circus
performer. Ancestral trees where leaves
fell on apathetic soil. Decimations.
Like the scourges of genocide
that took the people who first
lived on this continent. Then
scientists dug up the old dead
to study the virus.

These viruses creep, cavalier
and potent through airports,
luxury liners, transports.
I wonder if anti-vaxxers
believe in masks? Or prefer
roulette?

I no longer believe the sasquatch
have survived the fires. I no longer
have faith in women in robes
in remote camps who study the past.
Nowhere is remote any more.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. Vermont is remote and is the second most-unpopulated state in the US. She carries a flame for social justice.

THE UNBELIEVABLE

by Anne Graue

Werner Jaisli constructed the 'ovniport' after claiming to have received a 'telepathic message' from aliens. Consisting of a circle of white and brown rocks shaped like a star, the unusual 'landing pad' measures approximately 48 meters in diameter and is situated in the small town of Cachi in the province of Salta. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 nraliessi / Flickr via Unexplained Mysteries, August 28, 2017

Lights in the forest spun, burned the grass. The buzzing sound has never left my ears.

I wake up every morning exhausted, smell sulfurous fog, and know that a ship is in the distance,

maybe on another continent; could be here any minute, take me away, bring me

back. No one would be the wiser.

My mother listened to a radio

program that shared  earth's mysteries

I have always known that the Loch Ness Monster was real; I yearned to witness the head

and neck rising out of the water, a scaly throwback to ancient times. Now I watch Nessie

CAM,  find documentaries about aliens, giant sea monsters swimming in the waters

off  many coasts, and I believe those who claim to have seen these things so obscure and yet

so prevalent, even with a beer and bad camera in hand.

How can so many claim to see what does not exist?

Where are the giant squid?

Scientists create documentaries, separate fact from fiction, the wheat from the chaff, searching

for the monster under the bed, the Yeti in the Himalayas; Sasquatch, and the Zone

of Silence; the Chupacabra, in Mexico and parts of Texas, kills livestock, drinks blood, leaves

nothing but empty shells, carcasses. We seem to have faith in existence without evidence.

She said that someone in Russia found Hell, could hear the screams and suffering

with a device lowered to the depths of, well, Hell, under the earth's crust,

where it ought to be, where they said it was. 

So we believe that Sasquatch roams the Oregon forests, the Mothman climbed a bridge

in West Virginia, people have been abducted by extraterrestrials, returned naked to their homes.

Another day she told me Bigfoot traveled through dimensions so would never

be found; that is why he is elusive to capture. When he reappears he may be

a Yeti or he may be the man who claims that he was in the famous Sasquatch film

shown in every documentary. So there it is.

UFOs hover over Phoenix, housewives on Bravo are real, and women are always

the ones who snap.

God

Allah

Buddha

I know what I know.

The ovniport in Argentina lays in wait for the ship to return, and a Nebraska farmer

drives at dusk from fields of hay neatly bailed, sees lights streak across the sky

as if they foretold a story, his story and how he came from a sky of meteors

and constellations, where Pluto was always a planet, and the Big Bang was mute. 

Anne Graue is the author of a chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press), and has published poems in literary journals and anthologies, includingThe Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books), Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus (Bibliotheca Alexandrina), Gluttony (Pure Slush Books),The Plath Poetry Project, One Sentence Poems, Random Sample Review, Into the Void Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, New Verse News, and Rivet Journal. Originally from Kansas, she lives in New York where she reviews poetry for the Saturday Poetry Series atAsitoughttobe.com and literary magazines and chapbooks for NewPages.com.