What You Remember

On Amos’s 110th birthday he was asked: “Having lived through so much history, if you had a time machine, what event would you go back and relive?”
     He answered right away: “It was my first day of school, one of those crisp September mornings. The leaves were still green, but there was this whiff of Autumn and wood smoke in the air. I was standing with Mom in the schoolyard. She smelled of lilac soap. She smiled and squeezed my hand before letting go. If I could do it over again, I’d squeeze her hand back, before I rushed away.

Inspired by 58 is the New 58. Illustration by Nancy Kay Clark.

58 is the new 58

As child he sleeps
In bed he sleeps
In sleep he dreams of mother

As boy he plays
In school he plays
He plays to be his father

As man he works
Ev’ryday he works
He works to heal his brother

Now it is evening, they are still.
There’s a place he wants to arrive at with her, a calm solid centre where they’re together in silence or laughter, exhausted or exuberant. Everything else grows from there, strong and enduring, far-reaching, always exploring.
Always, there they still are at the centre.
Always, their souls languid with longing for each other.


Inspired by Misconceptions. Photo by Fred Ni.

Misconceptions

She wondered what it would have been like to grow and eject a human. To have or to not, was never a plan—it just worked out that way. She grew accustomed to the question, “so how many children do you have?”

One Halloween Eve at work, her CEO asked why she wasn’t home taking out the kids. Oh, the eyes of pity and overt judgment. Enquiring minds wanted to know. She wasn’t childless or childfree; just a woman living her life. Once she worried, she conceived a menopause baby; she peed on “the stick,” and frantically googled Naomi Campbell. 

Inspired by The Sting. Photo by Nico Zeißig.

The Sting

In this week’s episode, the Enterprise crew encounters a patriarchal society where the scientists have been confounded for generations by a problem arising from the fact their females are so fertile, they inevitably become pregnant from their first act of coitus.

     You’d think their primary concern would be with overpopulation, but no—natural selection worked that one out a long time ago. And that’s the real problem because, after a male’s first successful insemination, a series of hormonal changes causes his reproductive organ to dry up and drop off.

     It does not grow back.

     And the women couldn’t care less.

Inspired by I'll have what she’s having. Image by Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator.

I'll have what she’s having

Mainlining Pitocin, I settled back to practise that useless breathing technique they sell you in Lamaze class. With ovine determination, I puffed and hallucinated my way through another five excruciating hours. I watched as a door handle morphed into an old man, a bridge, a rabbit . . . then I remembered how the woman next to me in triage ordered off her birthing menu like she was at Susur Lee’s.

     “Right,” she says to the nurse, “I want nitrous oxide and a vacuum cap.” This was Mount Sinai in the mid-nineties, after all. Not earthy-crunchy-manage-the-pain-through-nipple-stimulation-and yoga-St. Joe’s.

     So I got me the epidural. 

Inspired by In a Pink Room. Image from Open Clipart.

The Greenbelt on Olympus

When the immortals asked Zeus to consider selling off part of Olympus, their case was difficult to refute. The global market for pantheism had peaked; revenues were way down. Zeus reluctantly agreed. Now, right next door, stood a billionaire’s massive mansion, from which helicopters came and went at all hours; recently, Nike had come to visit Hera and got sucked into a rotor. Yes, times had changed. Now the billionaire—Russian? American? Zeus couldn’t tell which—was pushing for a wall around Olympus. Zeus despised his neighbour, but thought this a prudent idea. The proles down below were increasingly obstreperous.

Inspired by In Gods They Trust. Image from the PS3 Game, God of War: Ascension, developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony.

In a Pink Room

In a pink room,
in a cold October attic,
spidery branches appear outside the window
and colours have faded to fog.
He sleeps beside me, tangled in his thoughts,
while downstairs, our hosts stir, put on the coffee.
Softly, the branches scratch the pane.
Shadows retreat across the walls.
Breath caught in my throat, I sit up—off-kilter and my head awash.
But with what? What is that something?
It’s too early—way too early to tell,
and I don’t know how I know,
but I know.
I am
I am one-month pregnant.
Pale yellow shines through the frost.

Inspired by Round-eyed Annie. Doodle by Nancy Kay Clark

Round-eyed Annie

Round-eyed Annie shows off her love proud tummy
She runs her finger down the vertical seam of her stretched skin
From her solar plexus to her soft nexus
Baby swollen and o hurry o, Tommy
Can you feel it kicking?
Put your hand in my hand and put your hand here
Can you feel it stirring?
Lay your ear upon my belly and tell me
Can you hear its hardly there heart beating?
O Tommy o I love this child so
Momma told me life made us so we could make life grow
O Tommy o
I make life grow

Inspired by A Choice of Sorts. Photo by Fred Ni.

A Choice of Sorts

It was one of their first dinner dates. He inhaled a piece of bruschetta and looked at her with teeth baring; a Herculean-like smile. She envisioned Mr. Clean with the corners of his mouth making sparkly dinging sounds in her head. It worked.

     Then Basil showed up. Unannounced.

He settled in for the evening getting comfortable in between the incisors. She tried not to look but Basil drew her in. Simultaneously repulsing and transfixing her with his emerald charm. She rushed through dinner planning the inevitable break-up. Later home alone, drinking a Smirnoff ice, she decided she could love Basil too.

Inspired by Hydra. Image by Walt Disney Pictures by way of People Magazine.

Hydra

They caught up with Hercules at the arcade downtown, holding court and pumping quarters into an old Hydra machine.

     “The girls down here are driving me nuts,” he boasted. “You try and tell them you’re just looking for a bit of fun, but then things start to get a bit serious—which is also okay—but then some stupid little problem crops up, and then another, and then it’s all with the stupid fights.”

     “So, then,” asked Corvus, “what do you do?”

     “You've gotta just cut them off,” said Hercules. “Burn ’em and leave, before they make their problems yours.”

Inspired by The Twelve Labours of Sophie. Animation by Justin Cyr.