Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

As I slid down the aisle, he woke
To stretch inside my wedding pouch Like an odalisque upon a couch
Posed for the artist’s final stroke. Lardered there since birth,
My husband, child, and final meal Engorges on my blood, my weal.
He is my dowry, goods, and worth.
Who could have guessed the embryo Found in the egg beyond the stars
Would give us back a world once ours
Near lost when birthrates fell so low. The midwife by the altar now does wait
To help me bear the meal that is my mate.

At first I didn’t realize
that they were having sex at all!
It rather took me by surprise,
in that treetop shopping mall…
no one less well trained could see that they were having sex at all
(hard to tell the “she” from “he”).
She turned pink and held his hand—
no one less well trained could see
that both appendages were glands!
He turned blue and sighed because she turned pink and touched his hand;
in a moment’s pregnant pause
she’d made a father out of him.
He turned blue and sighed because she’d knocked him up. They looked so prim,
at first I didn’t realize
she’d made a father out of him…
it rather took me by surprise.

I came upon the mating pair in pain,
As, ravenous, they fucked themselves apart.
I called an SOS, but all in vain.

Their golden blood was salty, like their rain,
A potpourri of sex, now sweet, now tart.
They seemed to be a mating pair in pain.

Yet neither one was by that mating slain.
They fought, they fucked through skin and bone and heart.
I called an SOS, but all in vain.

Still watching, I twice filled, and then was drained.
In alien engagements that I chart
I come, with all such mating pairs, in pain.

What sings through red blood, courses to the brain.
When watching partners cannot take a part.
I called an SOS, but all in vain.

Such voyeuristic voyages make plain.
The moment when first contact can first start.
I came upon that mating pair in pain
And called my SOS, but through a vein.

Sex among the Abo creatures
On this planet has strange features.
There are seven in each act;
Sex in bed is tightly packed.

Creature one is there to glom,
Aboriginal Peeping Tom.

Creature two can hear them come,
Like the sanding of a drum.

Creature three licks up the mess.
Can’t have cum upon a dress.

Creature four does all the stroking,
Rubbing, tapping, touching, poking.

Creature five sits at the head,
Sniffing pheromones in bed.

Creature six can’t catch its breath,
Fainting at each little death.

Creature seven feels them all,
With its back against the wall.

We, of course, deplore the notion
Sex is heat and light and motion.

Sex is done inside the head
With a solemn five in bed!

It’s time you see:
I have to get this thing across to you: those weird “human” creatures sometimes do make sense. But look: the twitching they call sex
has no familiar causes or effects!
Attend to me:

I slide out into position.
You flex and choose a posture
that prepares you for coition;

selecting (from six) the one aperture,
that carries the sweet reek of power,
that almost-rotting allure,
and open it wanton wide. Your flower
of wet flesh puckers and throbs. A drop spatters me. I tongue it and taste the sour

invitation and hunger to fill up
your hunger. Now give me that small sign for us to merge and meet. The very top
of your eyestalk grows rigid. I align tentacle to flower, concentrate, struck
with your hungry beauty. Then intertwine
six and six, and hear you start the long suck from deep inside me to deep inside you.
If humans only knew the one true fuck

we could talk to them. But what humans do is feel each other’s bodies and excrete
dumb juices. Not like the way I flow to you.

Hard to say
if they can know each other well at all without this flow. They stand and call
out noises based on patterns in their minds.
Hardly ever taste or smell. And just plain blind
to DNA.