The Visitors
a narrative poem by Ed Higgins
Now, don’t get any ideas that Underside Stories is a simple alien narrative site, only accepting stories about otherworldly visitors, because that is not the intention. Still, here we are, with aliens ruling the roost again!
In this quick narrative poem, the tension is palpable but never descends into fright. Instead, it builds a creeping discomfort, or perhaps a mounting sense of wonder, depending on your viewpoint.
Let us know how it made you feel below!
The Visitors
They come from the sky
in pairs, mostly.
Wearing invisible moccasins
to hide their tracks.
Or at least because the moccasins
sometimes make them invisible.
But I live alone
and they know that.
So they peer in at the windows
of my bedroom. Sometimes we speak
through a screen if it is summer.
But I never let them in.
Even though they have faces
innocent as a small child
their yellow eyes are like cats.
Or the distant stars I sometimes gaze to. About the author:
Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including recently: Danse Macabre, Modern Haiku, Statement Magazine, and Tigershark Magazine, among others. Ed is Writer-in-Residence at George Fox University. He is also Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. Ed has a small organic farm in Yamhill, OR, raising a menagerie of animals—including a rooster named StarTrek. Every time he sees one of his turkeys hobble-run across the barnyard for tossed cracked corn, he’s seen an amusing side of the underside.