KEITH MARK GABOURY
Planet X Soap Opera
Neighborhoods of rabbit ear
TeeVees picked up an exobroadcast
shoveling pixels
into the living rooms
flanked by apron-clad glee.
A Riverside wife went into
convulsions, a Newton priest
performed an exorcism
on his RCA, and a flat-earther
swam into the Atlantic,
seeking to breaststroke off the globe.
I dropped my jaw
like a milk carton, dairy spilled
before the plot points
of exoskeleton females
dramatizing within the off-Nowhere theatrics.
At a scene’s wrap, the production
cut to a commercial for extraterrestrial
body wash: a reptilian creature
lathered himself while reading off cue cards.
Suddenly, Walter Cronkite
discontinued the disturbance,
announcing technical difficulties
to America wailing in hysteria.
Yes screams piped in
through my Wichita window
as I fashioned my remote
into a projectile at my screen,
mouth cranked open
to our solar system’s data stream.
TeeVees picked up an exobroadcast
shoveling pixels
into the living rooms
flanked by apron-clad glee.
A Riverside wife went into
convulsions, a Newton priest
performed an exorcism
on his RCA, and a flat-earther
swam into the Atlantic,
seeking to breaststroke off the globe.
I dropped my jaw
like a milk carton, dairy spilled
before the plot points
of exoskeleton females
dramatizing within the off-Nowhere theatrics.
At a scene’s wrap, the production
cut to a commercial for extraterrestrial
body wash: a reptilian creature
lathered himself while reading off cue cards.
Suddenly, Walter Cronkite
discontinued the disturbance,
announcing technical difficulties
to America wailing in hysteria.
Yes screams piped in
through my Wichita window
as I fashioned my remote
into a projectile at my screen,
mouth cranked open
to our solar system’s data stream.
Copyright © Dec 2017 Map Literary and Keith Gaboury
Keith Mark Gaboury earned his M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in such literary journals as Barely South Review, New Millennium Writings, and Crab Fat Literary Magazine. He is an early childhood educator and poet in San Francisco, California.
