On Becoming a Surrogate
For Alice N. Persons & Octavia Butler
by Eve Anthony Hanninen
i.
Octavia said, in an interview, she'd laid plans
for new novels until the goodly age
of 80— mirages choked with fertile seeds,
prospects of innovative habitats,
dreams envisioned but uninvented.
They neglected to imagine a continued her,
so at 58 she slipped and hit her head
on icy steps outside the realms of fiction,
where Xenobiology slunk away onto the frozen sidewalk,
where breeders, petals and those copious seeds
fled from light and germination.
I, and others, fled to the comforts of eulogy.
ii.
Alice showed me a livelier continuance;
she fled to dance, pity for an amputee shaking
in her hips, retribution for Diabetes in the flexing
of her ankles, toes and gyrations of the knees,
phantoms possessing her from Mrs. Harris'
truncated Twist. The missing piece
named leg or joy or freedom
danced again in Alice, who made it hers
in the livingroom and mine
in a poem
before we'd miss it, too.
BIO: Eve Anthony Hanninen resides in the valley of a stupendous ring of snow-capped mountains in Lower British Columbia, Canada. The beauty of the Pacific Northwest often imbues the themes of her art and writing. She is most interested in the effects of human experience, how environment impacts individuals, and in exploring these combined results in poetic form.
Eve's most recent works appear in Wicked Alice, The Barefoot Muse, Origami Condom, Shit Creek Review, The HyperTexts, Mannequin Envy, Southern Hum, and elsewhere, as well as in Trim: Mannequin Envy Anthology. She was guest speaker on The Writer's Craft for Seattle's It's About Time Writer's Reading Service in October 2006. She is also Editor of The Centrifugal Eye Online Poetry Journal. EMAIL: centrifugaleye@gmail.com