Wannabe Abductee Addresses the Mechanical Alien Hypothesis (with a line from Elizabeth Bishop)
They tell me you are mostly likely a machine—
beyond biology, a series of whirs and clicks
and light patterns so devastatingly large
I could never shake your hand, if hand
is indeed a thing you have. I don’t want buzz
and fluorescence, slick metal tables and cameras
over eyes— I want your meat to meet mine, wet tissue
and clammy warmth, probe and pain, translucent eyelids
and blinking in the rain. I want to carry you like
a baby inside my sweater up to the top of a hill
and tell you the star names I remember— Exxon, hard-ee’s,
the gas and go. I want to show you my terrestrial
glow, my physics learned from Star Trek. I’ll wipe
your mouth with a greasy paper from the drive-in line
and let you watch, mysterious the headlights making turns
and turns and turns. I’ll tell you how all traffic feels a little bit
Christmas—red, green, red. And you a child I never had to give birth to,
who I can hand back to the stars like a nanny,
or the mother of Christ. Esso, Esso, somebody once said-- Somebody has to love us all.
-- Annah Browning is the author of the poetry collection Witch Doctrine (University of Akron Press, 2020) and the chapbook The Marriage (Horse Less Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Black Warrior Review, Court Green, and elsewhere. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Blackburn College.