All Faculty Excerpts

Daddy

Ancient Aliens

While you’re Just doin’ weekend chores

with your boyfriend (or is it fiancé now?),

I’m gorging again on The History Channel,

trying to convince myself I might meet

someone at the gym if only I could levitate

from my sofa with the same ease and grace

Chinese Myths assigned to “flying dragons”

some Ph.D. (with A Flock of Seagulls haircut)

insists were aircraft awing naïve ancestors.

They just didn’t have a name for it.

I didn’t have a name for it either. The alien

sensation that descended that afternoon

your boyfriend—my long-time friend—

finally introduced his new beau. A hand-

shake charged like the jolt that same Ph.D.

suggests was not the lightning of Zeus

scalding humans from Mount Olympus

(perhaps for a vice like coveting?) but

a glowing beam, some otherworldly force

from some bird-thing landing from beyond.

The aliens suddenly all the men I believed

I had loved. Dwarfed now from the top

of a pyramid I couldn’t recall climbing.

Always falling short. Not enough. Not it.

Whatever it was.

I just never had a name for it. Until you

offered yours. And I was struck dumb,

a stargazing primitive willing to carve

your likeness into cavern walls, learn

your language, spend a whole lifetime

flattening the earth into a landing pad

in case you might visit again.

--

Reprinted courtesy of NYQ.
To learn more about Michael and his book, go here.