Taking On The Mother Poem by Val Morehouse

Ripley: “Get away from her, you Bitch! ”
___________From Aliens


Inside my body’s darkness her diseased swarm nests,
this red queen who bides her time, a pregnant moon
hatching her vicious logic to savage the
fate of another.

Ruthless as a mantid she advances to attack.
Conquer with no mercy. Take with no recourse.
Kill without honor. Breed. Use. Multiply. Hers
is the cancerous beak that feeds on another life.

She lays death in me like an egg.
“Give up. ’Resistance is futile.’
I will feed you to my children.”
Not so fast, you mother.

I will take on your diagnosis the way an earthquake
levels a mountain to dust in thirty seconds.
Atom by atom, fist by fist, mind to mind,
I have found you out; and you have no choice

but to close with me now. Feel the radiant
tornado of my justice, speed and vector enough
to grind every last one of your clan under
the terrible rotation of my rage.