Dave's Con-Trails

by Ed Makowski


Working in a basement
computer warehouse 
with one other man 
who was hired
before me, so
                   naturally
he had seniority 

and played
conspiracy theory radio 

We worked between
40 and 60 hours per week
listening to radio shows about
time travel, chupacabras, 
grays (slang for aliens),  
poisonous con-trails, 
the bloodline of Christ,
werewolves and vampires,
unidentified flying objects, 
abnormalities in weather 
and
everything was caused by
government experiments.

A dusty decades old 
basement with poor lighting
on land that had been  
Native American marsh.
Deforested, drained, filled. 
Then paved and built to become 
new retail opportunities 
in mid-century America. 

When Dave started seeing men
walking about in loin cloths,
and vanishing, I wondered
what had taken them
so long.