The poem “Sci-Fi Violence” by Josh Bell (No Planets Strike) manages to tell a complete story of alien attacks and the trauma suffered by a survivor, with just a few well-chosen images here and there. It’s totally intense, and it’s well worth the five or six minutes it’ll take to read.
Here’s how it begins:
Would a true prophet use an electric
salamander as a tongue?
That’s what I thought. Last rainfall
in the new city, held here
until we ship the wounded home,
the enemy collecting like aberrant
cells across the river.
Read the whole thing over in the New Yorker.
