My Samus

Joseph Spece

June 3, 2015

SR388. The planet Zebes. A directive read EMERGENCY ORDER: DESTROY THE MOTHER
BRAIN   THE MECHANICAL LIFE VEIN

I drop from Charter Zed like a spacehawk. Portal One homes me in the hive.
Tourian.

Never a footfall this ringing nor reapers of this cast. One lanced the air to halves,
burst to shreds after his first attempt to fell me. GET UP I got up.

A glittering cave and furs blown in a breezeless passage. Machines to spawn,
spawn, spawn each hateful thing. Creatures that move in circles though they can
see.

I waxed a valenced enemy to ones like these, mawkish and mutant, I shot them
bodiless, a bunch of vapors in the cool. So it continued: new raptors, ghost bricks,
a face on four stems.

Pixilated and heavy, I leap and infer topography from leaps—ice is best for
heights. I learned to molt by molting.

Believe this: I found the making of bombs tucked in a statue’s niche, took it. I’m
alone in weird music. I go fuzzy at cuts. A fissure finds me sunk and wishing. I
strengthen still.

The acolytes, the sheer number of lackeys! I plod on, blaster in hand, red-white—
this my pith, being right. Norfair. Brinstar. The pirates raise arms to fight. Down to
Kraid’s endless clutch of potted mouths, back from Ridley’s mantis beams, I lay
waste.

Glims drip in purple; ledges make land; halls hang in forged temperature; I’m a
pyrotechnic in tuck, sister. I swell to hero, full of kills. I’d have the beasts on and
off me.

In the Metroid den, I ran.

They smelled me like siphons, hulking, their hunger a heart. One took the corner
like a freed cheetah.

Hurry up please it’s time
Hurry up please it’s time

Coils poured out in an unnatural rain. Blasting and tumbled, bounties forgot,
slowed to an inch of space-time in the heat of her breeding, I hunted for lasting in
this wasted place. Does it matter if the planet, I wondered. Does it matter if I matter.
Never wondered if it matters to be a man, however.