you must be in the blood because it comes from the basement inside our bones—and we think you like basements the way you like talking and we feel you—clinging in your three-piece suit to the underside of an iceberg—we will save you from sea lions—there are things on the surface from we cannot save—we are loathe to spill your blood onto the blue-white milk ice floes—we are loathe to spill or spell

a flotilla of ships approaches—all alike all alike one might save us—one might take you with us Freud please come with us—all these years into your future you never dreamed about us even once—but we dream about you Freud we dream about the world beneath the world

9.

future clones, we did not know that Freud took his own life—where did he take it he took it into the future—but before he could take it into the future he had to break it off from the animal—now he is the animal beneath the animal—you offspring we never knew we could make so many animals essentially an infinite number—we could repopulate the earth with ourselves with the right machines including ourselves—we could reproduce ourselves and train ourselves to reproduce ourselves to reproduce ourselves—this could go on until someone stops us or our death drive thank you Freud—allows us to return to the room beneath the room—the body beneath our body that is exhausted—that is mere breath that is leaning heavily on the airlock—with its cool metal wheel against our hot olding face

10.

we apologize we are less like us in all the ways we are like us like you like us we are so so sorry—we just knew that we would let ourselves down but we didn’t know what else to do—we didn’t want to take our lives because we thought it would be better—to give them away to all of you—it’s true that someone always has to pay

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

—Carl Jung, in an interview with Frederick Sands, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 10, 1961

Because a baby’s hands form early in gestation, researchers like to say that they amount to a “fossilized record” of early development, one that may provide insight into future well-being.

—Eleanor Smith, “Palm Reading Is Real? How Your Hands Actually Predict Your Future,” The Atlantic, July/August 2015

Unalloyed

Unalloyed

Lambert: You admire it.

Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor . . . unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

—Alien

1.   The woman in white by the side of the road will eat your blushing heart and throw your alien, illegible, edible laws into the fire.