25 | Poetry by Shane Schick

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Earthlings

Take them to our leaders? No,
they would never ask us that.

Why would they want to sit
down with the G-20 and debate

the difference between a visit
and possible colonization

when they haven’t even gotten
to see the way we surrender

to the everyday torture the air
seems to do to our diaphragms

in order to let loose sounds
that never form a single word

but nevertheless constitute the
planet’s only universal language?

Or maybe they would request
an audience with the rain

and stand there getting soaked,
wondering why we cower under

almost anything to avoid contact
with an element that makes

the same round trip to the skies
and back, its only persistent goal

to know us, love us, at the level
of skin, fabric or hair. ‘Earthings’

is how we imagined they might
address us, but surely this would

be an opportunity to listen and
learn what their long-distance

study had led them to classify
us as a species, a chance

to discover that, beyond the
boundaries of clouds and sun,

we had been discussed and
contemplated by a name we

never knew, one which told
the truth about who we are

better than we told ourselves.
And once we answered to it

perhaps the entire world would
change. Become almost alien.

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