ABDUCTEE 103. NORTHERN VIRGINIA. PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT.
The windows purred white fire.
Like an animal of fire had stepped through the glass
as if it wasn’t there.
Engines, no engines did I hear, or a pulse.
Heat.
Like a woodstove, concentrated,
as if a hand full of dry intense light
reached out and grabbed my breast bone.
Warm all over, spine pricking, needles pushed home,
all the way through,
as if I were the nothing that water is
when it steams from fire.
The house did not matter.
The locks I installed
when that burglar came round last winter,
did not matter.
Drunk, sober, summer, winter, don’t matter.
Time of year don’t matter. Or who shares my sleep.
They come.
They come for me
when they will. When they will
I come.
It is truth.
I don’t recall seeing alien technology.
Wouldn’t know it if I saw it. But dealing with them…
like that play you read in high school,
where the witches tell Macbeth
he’s gonna kill the king.
They give him no choice.
It’s like that. I have no freedom. And the world is dark.
Stephen Scott Whitaker is a member of National Book Critics Circle, and literary review editor for The Broadkill Review. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in dozens of publications. His previous chapbooks include the steampunk inspired The Black Narrows, Field Recordings, and The Barleyhouse Letters. Whitaker teaches theater, literature and psychology in rural Maryland. In 2004 he was the recipient of an NEA grant to adapt Romeo & Juliet into a rock musical. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with his family.
He blogs on occasion here: http://fieldrecord.blogspot.com/
Devilfish Review 