For Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
by Ricky Davis

This morning:
a Martian somehow found its way into an all-girls dormitory.

        It came from the trees.
(Someone must have propped the door open.)

                He was a male,
                but there was really nothing sexy about it.

                                                 Instead,
he spent most of his time playing with the showers,
                                 pulling curtain rings back and forth,
watching the shimmering mist become steel bullets
while everyone else was asleep.

He didn’t really understand it,
nor did he see anything insidious
about the empty glass bottles he juggled.

                                        He raced them
                                                up and down the corridors.

(Southern Comfort won at the last second!)

He saw an empty room and played
with the pillows and comforters,
and sat contentedly until
                from outside of the window called
                an old, withered tree branch.
                        He slipped through the screen and climbed aboard,
                                                then rode the slingshot into the clouds.

(Somewhere else,
Robert Frost laughed through layers of topsoil.)

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com

Ricky Davis is a student at Washington College, where he plans to study
English and Creative Writing. He is also involved in several musical
ensembles on campus, and plans on forming several new projects this coming
semester. He hopes to eventually become some mixture of a teacher, a
musician and a poet. Until then, he plans on staying in school for as long
as possible (within reason) and honing his skills further.