arrowhead you're used to seeing it, you know people killing each other on the streets all of my friends carry guns i started carrying knives when i was eight the blade looked like an arrowhead and the t-shaped handle fit between the knuckles in my palm i was tough for a girl, i guess i've only killed one person it was when i was fourteen there's one mad rush of panic then you just finish the job and run like hell that's why i'm in this house, you see they couldn't put me in jail they've taught me a lot here at first i didn't want to get away from it all from the violence it was what i knew it was what i expected and then someone killed my sister and i knew what they were all talking about i missed her suddenly i knew i made someone else feel that i learned what guilt and remorse were and ever since i've wanted to get out
Janet Kuypers
Orphaned Embryos
The fate of two abandoned "orphaned" frozen embryos that could be heirs to the multimillion dollar estate of a Los Angeles businessman was under official consideration and growing controversy. . .
AP Wire Story
Ice is the condition of life unlived, crystal zygote. Orphans now. Were we ever anything more? Here is the potential for bone and ligament, for kneeling and dance. There is the ice crystal that will become an Achilles tendon, and here is the deltoid that will hold a child, lift a kitten out of a tree.
You think blood's gonna flow here? Frozen blood doesn't flow.
We have a chance.
Miniscule at best. A snowflake's chance in hell.
Motherless zygotes are so depressed. Catalogue potential. This microscopic chip contains the capacity to develop a cerebellum, a cerebrum, to traverse the currents of gravity and become a column to lift us to new heights above our ancestors.
Oh, sure, high enough to oversee the bacchanal but never close enough to join.
Nevertheless. This tiny gem of DNA contains the basis for the caratid artery, the brachial artery -
Dream on.
. . . the pulmonary artery, and the femoral artery. That pin pick, smaller than an angel's wings. . .
You can't get away with that.
. . . could be a heart. Beating.
I see.
Of course, there are the parts no one wants to contemplate, the large intestine, the small intestine, the liver. . .
Who will change our diapers?
We're rich. We'll hire someone. Here we have the potential for cartilage, there is tissue for lungs. . .
They say we could be monsters.
You're a monster. I'm normal. Here is the opportunity for a thalamus, there the thyroid gland.
You will always be tired. I will have no gonads.
Androgynous people are quite popular these days.
We'll never know. Believe me. Already they're shuffling around in the lab, back-stepping, double tracking. An excess of hand-wringing. Oh what to do with the "living heirs."
A difficult moral dilemma.
For them. Not for me. I want to live a long life and enjoy my filthy lucre.
You make a poor orphan. Orphans should be strong. Here is the possibility of pelvis, there the potential for ganglia, and right over there, the sciatic nerve.
Who says orphans should be strong? I'm no survivor.
These parts we retain in our hearts, the superior vena cava, the tricuscpid valve, the inferior vena cava, and then of course the right and left atriums, right and left ventricles, ventricular septum . . .
Hold your breath. Here they come.
Wendy Thornton
