Category Archives: Poem poetry Octavia Butler, science fiction

OCTAVIA (part two)

I posted your picture
for everyone in the group

maybe they
were blown away

perhaps
they did not notice anything

for sure, they will
look at you
and see
what they see

read you (that’s the plan)
and read
what they read

or find what they have read,
what you wrote,
has changed
the whole process and
experience of reading for them

see
what they see
touch what they are
touched by
feel
  what they feel

this story so tactile that
alien pincer
on
  inside their skin
might be too much for them
if not
for the sedative, euphoric
venom of their sting

Oh how we started at the stars
wondering what otherness
out there
    what implications of contact

do not tell me
that behind those writerly eyes
you do not
    feel that alien texture of
velvet close against you

hungry for us for our companionship for
the service
   we must offer

tearing into us with if not infinite care then at least practiced
competence

and other worlds you have
in there
    not yet on the page

I sense their birth
already
        longing to read, scared

to turn to the first page

I posted your picture
now they can see
      by the light of day what
dark
   imagination might
look like

not that it be a thing
that cannot live unless it
itself proclaim

I posted
    your picture better that

when it comes to your words
we might negotiate their terrors.