The Game

Josephine Jelly had roller-coaster braces
that gripped her teeth and roared
when she cheered
for the football players who plowed the field
with losing linemen,
crumpling their gumball helmets.

To Josie's left sat Melanie Moodie,
homecoming queen and unwilling sister
who absolutely hated that she was related
to her little brother Sam,
who refused to be human
and came and went through the doggie door
any chance he could.

Animal Sam, as he liked to be called,
sat quietly next to his glittery sister,
thoughtfully sniffing the baby-sitter popcorn-buttery wind
trying to remember
where he'd buried each half
of one particular pair
of pink plastic buckle-up shoe-shaped bones
that he knew she would soon be missing.

Under his nose, completely undetected,
crept Donovan Dunfee,
dressed in the darkness like a starless night
beneath the bleachers,
pondering cell phones, space ships, and ipods
between the slats of the battery-powered bleacher antenna
from which he had signaled
his alien rescue.

Kathy Cramer, the Cougar mascot,
spotted his beacon from a cheerleader's shoulders.
Raising her furry arms, she waved
in a spirited fury of orange and blue,
with a whip of her paws and a twirl of the tail,
which caught the attention of Animal Sam,
who barked and stood to leave the bleachers
to get the field to chase her down.

Melanie Moodie instinctively grabbed
her no-good brother, or so she called him,
brimming with anger and partly possessed,
as she anchored her fists on her homecoming hips
and yelled as loud as her lungs would take her,
inspiring an entire football team
to get back there, or else.

They wrinkled the defense,
crushing their helmets,
planting the linemen with a touchdown tackle,
sending Josephine screaming,
her braces emitting high-frequency waves
that shook the bleachers to the cosmic core
and echoed a message
on Donovan Dunfee's detector:


Have fun tonight.
Don't wait on us.
We've decided to catch the game.

- The Aliens

p.s. Who's that in the mascot suit?


to which Donovan Dunfee sent another signal,
catching Kathy's eye
which made her wave,
bringing Sam to bark
which angered his sister,
fueling the players
who flattened the linemen,
sending Josie screaming,
her braces making ripples
which Donovan read with his bleacher detector
in the form of another
alien message.

And so the game
went on and on
for Josephine Jelly,
Melanie Moodie,
Animal Sam,
Kathy Cramer,
Donovan Dunfee,
and The Aliens,
who all attended
the football game
on that fateful Friday night.