
ALIEN Resurrection (1997)
By: Paris Howard
All I can think about
Really
Are girders, now
Who is
Getting viscous
In the cross-hatch
And in the complex poetry
Of the ship
I learned to live alone
Sui generis,
Orbits ago
Snuffing, I gained
Rolling fully in my
Molecules.
I knew I would never
Be happy
Nor had I
Any psychology
To speak of.
Hunger was my
Egg phase
I was a membrane in which
Everything ate
Each voracious sheeting
It was not hunger anymore,
It was just being
Each star in the eye of the universe
(A blind owl itself)
Simply an empty stomach or four
I tooth, a tooth,
Corrosive.
(I did not know what is an owl)
I
A slackening egg
In my first instar,
Made of black meat,
Hung
I had endless
Conjoining potential
I laid then my
Genitals over the rock.
I did not know
What is a man
Or a meal.
That came later.
In this being
There was no
Axis.
No orientation.
Knowing now what
I do know with
My new parts
You cannot conceive [it].
When the tick-tick
Of my life cycle
Went on.
Then
Finally
A visitor,
A womb.
Spartan men
Dragged their
Boot heels
Across my ceramic.
Encountered
With no awareness
Of my livingness
A field of flowers.
They thought
My slime meant
Malice, I was
Just my babies
I could not be otherwise.
Whose rapacity
Was it really?
Untergrund they saw:
Matting, spiderous,
Hollowed, Gulf
Oil, Snapping
Chain capability
Grasping
My place
I had to pounce first.
Since I am a cloud
Of taking,
I took the tools
They held
In their flesh.
I know:
Owls, women, cortex, soil.
I remain
One boiling calculation —
One [God] mirror —
Good luck.

Paris Howard is a Berlin-based writer, sex worker and mutual aid worker. She has published essays in Prospero, The Quietus and 3AM Magazine, and poems in Lesbians Are Miracles and Openwork Magazine.

You can find Paris on Twitter @tr3tinoin.