Joe Balaz lives in northeast Ohio in the Greater Cleveland area. He is of Hawaiian, Slovakian and Irish descent, and has created works in American English, Hawaiian Islands Pidgin English, concrete poetry and music-poetry. He is the author of After the Drought (1985), two CDs of music-poetry, Electric Laulau (1998) and Domino Buzz (2006), and co-author of Expanding the Radius (2010), a book of concrete poetry and photography. Balaz is currently the editor of 13 Miles from Cleveland, an online magazine of literature and art. Previously he edited Ramrod: A Literary and Art Journal of Hawai’i (later the O’ahu Review) and Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature. He was also a contributing editor on the advisory board to Hawai’i Review: Aloha ‘Aina. Balaz’s work has appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies. More information on him can be found at www.joebalaz.com.
You may have heard: Aliens are real
and they can be contacted through the US Postal Service.
I’m looking inside a dark mailbox
at tiny metallic objects
with shiny angelic faces.
a column of piled saucers
snakes its way into the clouds –
on the topmost plate
a gathering of ants are doing an interstellar bugaloo.
Cosmic sugar
like Peruvian marching powder
can get the folic acid circulating
and cause many a thorax to head for the edge of the nearest black hole.
Leaping into a prayer like a lemming
everyone follows everyone else in a regimented litany –
there must be a dead moth
somewhere near that deflated space suit.
On my computer screen
I just got an email: magnesium
is the fuel that runs their vehicles.
Thank you so much Flash Gordon
for your cryptic message –
if it wasn’t for you
I would never have given up the saxophone
for the wonders of the universe.