Tonight's Poet Corner: I Didn't Like

I Didn't Like
by Belinda Roddie

I
didn't like his tone of
voice so I took an demodulator
signaled for a signal that took
ages to return to me.
The

extra of terrestrials
was smoking in a bar along the
borders of his hometown
when he took up my transmission
but

he didn't understand a word of
English, so he went to an
interpreter who knew a hundred
sixty seven dialects of
alien and micro-

scopic
organisms' tongues, and he was
able to translate my words
into a sign of kind misfortune
that the creatures rather
liked. But

when they sent me back a message
as the teacher went on droning
with that same old intonation
that I wasn't fond of, I read off
the streams of consciousness that they had
typed to me, and
frankly I found that I strongly and
consistently despised their tone
as well.