Tuesday Poem: Contact, by Tracie McBride

 

Once,

the idea of sex with aliens

might have appealed.



But,

having encountered

your loathsome race,

I am cured

of my deviancy.



You,

with your putrid salty stench,

your pore-pitted skin

oozing at the mere

mention of heat.



You,

with appendages

upon appendages

dangling from your

spongy carapace.



You,

with your tiny globular eyes,

your chaotic, misfiring brain,

and that blind pink parasite

squirming inside your mouth.



It's enough to turn

all three

of my stomachs.



Credit note: "Contact" was first published in Kaleidotrope, April 2007. It was republished in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry From New Zealand, edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones (2009), and is included in Tracie's new collection Ghosts Can Bleed.



Tim says: I will be posting my interview with Tracie McBride, a New Zealand poet and short story writer who's now living in Australia, later this week. I asked her to send me a selection of her poems from which I could choose one as a Tuesday Poem, and although I liked all the poems she sent, I couldn't go past this one, which is a particular favourite of mine from the Voyagers anthology. Science fiction poetry doesn't have to be serious!



Tracie has a lot of interesting things to say in our interview: about being a 'Kozzie' - a Kiwi-Aussie; about her writing; and about the changing face of publishing - she's also the vice-president of Dark Continents Publishing. Look out for our interview later this week.



You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.