Annah Browning 

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. 

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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.