Art Bell

by Sharon Thesen

Art Bell would always say when someone phoned in about
coming home and finding aliens sitting on the couch,
“weren’t you absolutely terrified?” Well no, they’d say,
not really, it was surprising but
the aliens were quite polite, took our blood samples
and it was hard to tell
if it really happened but we KNOW it did . . .

Art Bell’s night–time voice
between canyons of semis
on the highway across the bridge
after a late class, Creative Writing or Composition,
dark in the winter, the heater on in the car

& the way the aliens inside the house looked and smelled —
what we’d call “concrete details” in Creative Writing —

the home–owners, an older couple, remembering
being lifted higher and higher
and the strange bright lights and gleaming machinery —

Thanks for the call, Art would say, from Nevada
at midnight, and next on would be someone
who knew the truth about contrails and the ghosts
of animals near nuclear waste dumps.