Milk Carton Kids


Now you know they were abducted
on the way to school, past chain-link
urban puzzles, robins scrabbling in the median,
book bag hanging with the weight of history,
or off the side of a rural road in late spring 
where slapped mosquitos left smears of horse blood 
and the churn of a distant John Deere sounded 
like the log sawing of sleep. Or the teens
taken under the lantern of the supermoon, 
by the unused railroad tracks, where flowering 
quince unfolds pale pink among 
the blackberry brambles and wharf rats 
run the length of cool steel in search 
of dropped chips. Or in the desert when dusk
slips on her silk nightie, and the saucers
scream like gulls while the aliens shape their ecto 
like cacti, go green and prickly. The extra-
terrestrials tap their feet to snap on
high-beams, but we call them stars. Up the kids go 
as your radio loses its tune, the television 
becomes a box of static, and the digital clock 
blinks five again and again. Not stuffed 
in a trunk, not dragged from a lake.