Memorial Benches by Desmond Mansfield
2021 August | Utopia Science Fiction Magazine
If aliens landed here,
On this seaside promenade
In these gardens, in this park
Not in daylight but in dark…
Without any of the usual preliminaries,
you understand. No “scan
the surface for life signs, ensign.”
No knowledge of exobiology,
no undercover ethnography,
no detailed understanding of our anatomy
from centuries of careful abduction and dissection.
Would they think we were elongated quadrupeds,
and that these were the statues we built to our illustrious dead?
END
Originally published in the August 2021 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.
Desmond Mansfield is an Englishman in Edinburgh. He is a fast reader of Golden Age science fiction and a slow writer of poetry and short fiction. He’s delighted to be published in Utopia Science Fiction and can be found on twitter @des_mansfield and instagram as desmond.mansfield.
