Mother's Milk - Ekphrasis Flash Fiction by M. A. Blickley & Photography by Zoe Anastassiou

 

“Mother’s Milk”

My lips tremble as if I am about to cry.  Please let your mother’s milk steel me against the animal I become when my brain confuses intellectual arousal with physical pleasure. 

Why do I nurse wounds that flow from the expectations of others?  Sometimes it feels like I’m the suckling of a Tin Woman who warns me she has no heart, yet dopamine builds with each puckered kiss swallowed in humiliation or spit back in defiance. 

You lactate a complex flow of contradictions that dribbles down my chin with the shame of a stain.  I want to forget the day I found that first red stain on my nine year old’s Wonder Woman panties.  Terrified, I run upstairs to tell Nana.  My gentle grandmother slaps me across my face. 

I cry: “Why did you hit me?”  Nana says, “Ask your mother when she comes home from work.” 

The moment I hear your key click in the keyhole I run to the door.  When I speak, you slap my face too.  You, who never laid on a hand on me.  Why?  You shrug: “I don’t know.  It’s what mothers do.  That’s what Nana did to me.” 

Why doesn’t your mother’s milk offer me the nourishment and immunity from judging myself as being nothing more than my menstrual flow?  From fertility to maternity to menopause, must I believe that I am simply what I bleed? 

Your milk sours in my mouth whenever you try to convince me your slap was done with love to awaken me from my childhood slumber.  I was nine years old. 

If I’m ever blessed to one day suckle my own daughter, I will offer up a kiss, not a slap, when she comes to me with her first red stain.  I will celebrate her menstrual flow as sacred, not shameful, as it honors her passage from childhood and will continue to do so right up to her old age. 

And should someone ever claim her blood is a curse, I will ask why is it painful to be reminded of your youth each month?

M. A. Blickley is a widely published author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center whose most recent book is a text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams. (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). 

Zoe Anastassiou is a Greek-Aussie-British theatre/TV/film/voiceover actress. She can currently be heard as audio drama regular Maddie the 8 yr old CEO on How We Manage Stuff, and she can be seen daily in her longstanding 365 Blog video series. Learn more at www.zoeanastassiou.com

Ekphrasis Flash Fiction Piece by Jana Hunterova & Mark Blickley

 

“BREAKDOWN BREAKTHROUGH”

So what if my instrument doesn’t have a reed? It’s just a thin piece of cane attached to the mouthpiece, the sound producing agent for the instrument. Why does it matter that all an audience can hear when I’m on stage is the clicking of the keys against the pads, and the sound of me inhaling and exhaling? When I would blow into that sax, it was like the Lord breathing life into Adam. God, I loved my silent saxophone!

Professor Bindt was no con man. He didn’t steal my music lesson money. With his guidance, I always entered a trance-like state whenever my lips touched the empty mouthpiece. I can’t describe the joy I got from playing my sax. My eyes would automatically close and I’d just drift.

Not only could I hear this rich music, but I’d see such incredible colors and visions. And the smells! Oh, the smells. It was beyond joy. Sometimes I’d capture this penetrating sorrow, but that, too, was exquisite and always left me refreshed.

I had tapped that special place Professor Bindt assured me I’d find. I know it sounds strange but the vibrations inside my instrument shook spirit and released these . . . these . . .

Gershwin once said he had more tunes in his head than he could put down on paper in a hundred years. With Professor Bindt’s revolutionary approach, a musician didn’t need a hundred years to complete his vision. Music isn’t marks on paper or grooves on a CD or streaming soundwaves. It’s here. Inside your head.

My mute saxophone supplied a structure. It channeled my musical energies. I may have played without a reed, but Professor Bindt taught me all the fingering and breathing techniques any saxophonist needs to be accomplished on the instrument.

Look, anyone can play an instrument. Only a select few can compose, can create art. The Professor’s teachings didn’t limit me to the sounds a saxophone could make. When my saxophone took off, it wasn’t an instrument, but instrumental in producing a music no single woodwind, or even orchestra, could reproduce. It was energy and love and anger and trust.

Jana Hunterova  (Photo) lives in Prague and is a Czech award-winning freelance photographer, filmmaker, and a doctoral program student at the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava.  She is a member of the international art cooperative, Urban Dialogues. http://janahunterova.com/

Mark Blickley (words) is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams.Clare Songbirds Publishing House - Amy Bassin & Mark Blickley