It has become pretty clear to me that I have begun working on a new series of poems inspired by the Blade Runner films, and by Philip K. Dick’s last interview which was published under the title What If Our World Is Their Heaven. Naturally, I have started referring to these new poems as the Blade Runner poems.

The Impostor

for Agent KD6-3.7

In Blade Runner,

Rachel’s childhood memory—

of baby spiders

hatching from a spider’s

egg before

devouring the mother—

have been

implanted, are like

newts

wriggling under the

thin skin of her

wrist. Androids, of course,

are engineered,

do not have mothers.

Rachel falls in love

with the central character

who hunts down

rogue androids—

& she suffers.

A devoted mother

might have

warned her not to fall

in love with a murderer. Might have

breezed into her

room & swept away the

nastiness of the

spider living outside the

window. In his final

interview, Philip K. Dick

claims to have

written the first story

about an android

that believes it is human.

The cruel

revelation comes

as a shock,

just as it did for Rachel.

Just as a salamander

wriggling under one’s

skin might

paralyze one with

bone-chilling

fear. The title of Dick’s

story is “The Impostor.” 

I am

warning you,

all of us have hatched

painful moments

we can’t undo or recognize.

Once implanted,

you would do well

to destroy those

memories.

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