Yes, it’s still playing, at a theater near you. Has been, ever since 1898 or so. In that version, Martians cavorted on mechanical tripods and incinerated England, while germs stood in for Jesus, and H. G. Wells preached a parable about Colonialism. Four years later, Méliès shot a bullet-ship into the eye of the Moon, no spiritual or social subtext, just a good old wink and a nod.

Or maybe it goes back further. Ezekiel’s sixteen-faced, thousand-eyed wheels-within-wheels, charioteer man-like, but not man, played across a brilliant screen of cloud and lightning, Jesus as the rush of wings. Spider and Hummingbird on Nazca Plain, distinct forms only from overhead, head jars with polychrome trees awaiting resurrection, bearded Viracocha rising from Lake Titicaca. Stonehenge as flying saucer landing light, Arthur Pendragon defender of the Faith.

Of course, what we have here reminds us more of George Pal’s 1953 film, with the death-ray appendage and indifferent metal, or Spielberg’s Close Encounters: any moment now the light will tremble like a leaf; the marquee will blast tuba cyber-notes of Re Mi Do Do So. Huddled Army men melt beside useless Jeeps. Truffaut signs solfège to a winking alien.

So, where are we? Running away? Drifting with St. Peter through the pearly gates? Feasting on loaves and fishes, or feeding Ripley’s metamorphic monster?

I’ll pay for the tickets, you get the popcorn.

 

Hannibal, Missouri (B&W photograph, 2023)

Copyrighted © by Jason Baldinger. All rights reserved.
Image appears here with photographer’s permission.

 

Jason Baldinger

is a poet and photographer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and co-founder and co-director of The Bridge Series, which unites the Pittsburgh literary and activist communities. He’s the author of 20 books of poetry, including most recently his fourth collection with poet James Benger, Waiting on Hummingbirds (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2024); American Aorta (OAC Books, 2023); The Afterlife Is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press, 2021); and A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2021).

His first book of photography, Lazarus, was released in 2023 by OAC Books. His photographs also appear in two collections released by Kung Fu Treachery Press: The Night Window, poems by Robert L. Dean written after Baldinger’s B&W photographs (2025); and Hope Is a Prison, poems by Rebecca Schumejda (2024).

Baldinger’s poems and photographs have been published widely in print journals and online. You can hear him read his work on Bandcamp and on LPs by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Links to Six Photographs by Jason Baldinger (plus the poems they inspired Robert L. Dean, Jr. to write), listed in the Index of Contributors for MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issues 17, 18, 19, and 21)

⚡ Two Poems After Jason Baldinger, by Robert L. Dean, Jr., with Baldinger’s photographs Hinton, West Virginia (2022) and Walkersville, West Virginia (2022), in The Ekphrastic Review (3 December 2022)

⚡ Cold Water Glistens, a poem by Jason Baldinger in As It Ought To Be (23 November 2022)

⚡ the bag lady of boone, and 11 more of Baldinger’s poems at Mad Swirl: A Creative Outlet (July 2023–July 2018)

Robert L. Dean, Jr.

is the author of The Night Window, with photographs by Jason Baldinger (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2025); Pulp (Finishing Line Press, 2022); The Aerialist Will Not Be Performing, ekphrastic poems and short fictions in response to the art of Steven Schroeder (Turning Plow Press, 2020); and At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018).

Dean’s work has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared or is forthcoming in: Chiron Review; The Ekphrastic Review; Flint Hills Review; Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity; I-70 Review; Illya’s Honey; KYSO Flash; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Midwest Quarterly; MockingHeart Review; October Hill Magazine; Red River Review; River City Poetry; Sheila-Na-Gig online; Shot Glass; Suisun Valley Review; Synkroniciti; Thorny Locust; Waco WordFest Anthology 2022; and the Wichita Broadside Project.

A native Kansan, Dean studied music composition with Dr. Walter Mays at Wichita State University before going on the road as a bass player, conductor, and arranger; he was a professional musician for 30 years, playing with acts such as Jesse Lopez, Bo Didley, Frank Sinatra Jr., Vic Damone, Jim Stafford, Kenny Rankin, B. W. Stevenson, and the Dallas Jazz Orchestra. And he put in a stint with the house band at the Fairmont Hotel Venetian Room in Dallas. While living in Dallas, he also worked 20 years for The Dallas Morning News and made the transition from music to writing before moving back to Kansas in 2007.

Dean is a member of The Writers Place and the Kansas Authors Club. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, midway between the Air Capital of the World and the Flint Hills.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Crosswalk Jesus: A Moment in Four Facets, prose poem by Robert L. Dean, Jr. published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 25, September 2024) and nominated for Best Small Fictions 2025

⚡ At the Lake with Schrödinger’s Cat, poem by Dean published in MacQ (Issue 21, January 2024) and nominated for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ Breath of the Lord, ekphrastic poem by Dean after a photograph by Jason Baldinger, published in MacQ (Issue 19, August 2023) and nominated for Best Spiritual Literature 2024

⚡ Finding the Door: One Writer’s Approach to Ekphrasis, an essay on craft by Robert L. Dean, Jr. in MacQ (Issue 13, May 2022)

⚡ Windmill, ekphrastic poem inspired by Dean’s maternal grandfather, published in KYSO Flash (Issue 11, Spring 2019) and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

⚡ Metal Man, ekphrastic poem inspired by a 1955 photograph of Dean’s paternal grandfather in the Boeing machine shop, published in The Ekphrastic Review (28 July 2018) and nominated for Best of the Net

⚡ Llama, 1957, ekphrastic haibun by Robert L. Dean, Jr. inspired by Inge Morath’s photograph A Llama in Times Square, published in The Ekphrastic Review (13 January 2018)

⚡ Hopper and Dean: Interview and poems in River City Poetry (Fall 2017)