God is an alien
of the female kind.
Stare at her,
you will go blind,
Mess with her,
you will go mad.
Contradict,
you will be gone.
—Jane Yolen
The Human Guest
The mating time was brief this year.
Our women sang notes like
floss on the wine-wind plains.
A human came who forced his seed
on Ala of the Yellow Eyes. We pretended
to be honored; we felt otherwise.
After, Ala wasn’t the same.
She cut her marvelous hair
which had been dark and long
grown down below her legs.
She wandered off to the Darklands,
heavy with child and none to celebrate.
We mourn her fate. If she survives,
she’ll raise his spawn alone.
She was the envy of us all.
When the child is born,
she’ll burn his father’s image
in the sands of our dead oceans.
The human sits on our sacred stones.
He preens his beard and leers at females,
with no more thoughts to waste on Ala;
he never even knew her name.
Come burrow season, we prepare,
sharpen our talons on caddo root.
When the freezing gales begin,
the human will demand sanctuary,
as his kind always does.
We will confirm his welcome
with the strewing of his bones.
—Marge Simon
