Tabloid Poems

I didn’t mind when she joined me on my break at Starbucks. I’d met her on the elevator coming and going from an office on a floor near mine. “I want to have a space alien’s baby,” she said. Froth from a caffe mocha lined her lips like the milk mustache of a little girl. I can’t remember what I said. If I said anything, I don’t think she heard, for she continued, “I spent a night beyond the moon one time. Aliens are wonderful lovers. You know that old song about slow hands? They have six of them.” She stopped, I looked aside, furtively checked my watch preparing to mumble an excuse and flee for the safety of my work, but something held me. “Oh,” she said. I could see disappointment in her eyes. “You misunderstand. It wasn’t like you think. But don’t ask me to tell you more. I’ve hidden all that in my heart. Talk cheapens things.”

“I don’t need to know,” I said. Then, without thinking, after sipping my coffee, I added, “But there’s something other I should hear, isn’t there?” When she spoke again, her voice was changed, softer, intense. “I was frightened,” she said. “A great light descended, enclosing me. He was in it—such gentleness I had never known. I yearned for him to stay. And now he is risen from this world, I yearn for him still. I want to give myself again and have his child. I want And now he is risen from this world, I yearn for him still. I want to give myself again and have his child. I want to birth his tenderness in this world.”

She looked long at me, said, “I’m called,” and touched my hand. “Good God!” I recoiled, threw back my chair, and fled.

—John Leax is professor of English and poet-in-residence at Houghton College. His book Grace Is Where I Live: The Landscape of Faith & Writing was reissued earlier this year in an expanded edition by Wordfarm.