Invasions

Pearl long-legs her way
into her teens in her
la de da, Jesus Saves,
southern hometown.
She doesn’t fit into
the who said what or
who got drunk world
of her classmates,
reads Sartre in her spare time.

She sits on soft pine needles
in the woods behind her house,
breathes in silence, wishes
Tonto, (looking like Johnny Depp),
would show up with Silver,
dangling the Lone Ranger’s mask
from his beckoning finger.

They could eight-leg the sky
each night, vaporizing weapons,
rescuing the border children,
and replanting forests,
their light so bright people would gaze ‘
in wonder, reporting UFO invasions
or even the second coming.

The poems of Pris Campbell have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including PoetsArtists, Rusty Truck, Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, and Outlaw Poetry Network. The Small Press has published eight collections of her poetry and Clemson University Press a collaboration with Scott Owens. When The Wolves Come After You, with Michael Parker, from Goss Publications and Squalls on the Horizon, a book of tanka, from Nixes Mate and My Southern Childhood are her most recent small press books. A former Clinical Psychologist, sailor and bicyclist until sidelined by ME/CFS in 1990, she makes her home in the Greater West Palm Beach, Florida, with her husband.