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.
poems 2 die for 