Dragon Skin

by Thomas D. Reynolds

Summer wears
a dragon skin,
so thick and scaly
even the heat
can’t penetrate
its shell.
Even aliens
get irritable,
crawling from
beneath rocks
on the town’s edge
to overturn a car
to release tension.
One of them, instead
of rushing back into
the cave to hide,
covers his mottled skin
with a coat of leaves
and lopes down the ravine
to peer into the windows.

The head of one of
the passengers is bleeding
and the other along
with the driver screams
to see the leathery face
through broken glass,
to see the tendril-like hand
batter through the windshield
and pull the body through.
Inside the cave the weather
is all the talk, how it mottles
the skin, pustules breaking out
and oozing down their limbs.
And that one, he just can’t
stand the heat on this planet.
At least he’s pestering someone
else this time. And when is he
going to finish up? I don’t believe
in toying with them that long.
Those screams are maddening.