Hecate articles from October 2006

Hecate archives from October 2006

Representing mothers.(motherhood)
October 1, 2006... I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils, O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loafs big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse. I'm...

Theory, desire, and maternity: at work in academia.(working mothers balance their family and work life)
October 1, 2006... It is the first day of my annual leave and here I am revising this paper for publication while my daughter is at her father's work Christmas party. This predicament, of being on leave and working, of needing to take leave from my daughter in...

The Waiting Years: Enchi Fumiko and the subjugated voice of the mother.(Biography)
October 1, 2006... Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986) was one of post-war Japan's most prominent women novelists. Her novel entitled The Waiting Years (Onnazaka, 1949-1957; 1957; tr. 1971) is set in early modern Japan and spans the four or so decades leading up to the end...

Erratum notice.(Correction notice)
October 1, 2006... There were several errors in the printed text of the story, 'Sex After School', in Hecate 32.1 (2006). The passages 'At School that day' to 'got so cross' (143-4); 'Bugger!'; 'Why did his mother' to 'leaned to read too'; 'Yes' to 'from her...

Radical parturition and literary labours of mourning: the case of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
October 1, 2006... The story of birth is the ur-story--both paradigmatic and very specific. As the story of intense human experience, of the primary interaction of the one and the other, the articulated image of birth as literal and figurative process constitutes...

The evolution of the 'mother' in tarot.
October 1, 2006... The first tarot decks, beautifully hand-painted in the courts of Northern Italy in the fifteenth century, boasted wonderful images of cherubim and angels, mysterious landscapes and many enigmatic figures wearing glorious robes of gold. At first...

Song of the damned.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... song of the damned 1. when gates freeze, the first thing born is the lock of a border guard; a scream in the shape of a dancer crawls from the carriage, listen, breathe it's home again, the stink of a spire ...

Revolution.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Revolution She takes her kids in hand one to one then one the other back. She finds the day with them their day really, not hers, speaks a different language. A new hierarchy has overthrown our democracy....

Terminal Poem: Soldier.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Terminal Poem: Soldier After 'What's Your Celebrity Style?' Cleo Magazine, July 2006 Your dusty, dusky nights packed tight as explosives, limbflung and brain-stung with partying. You're chasing not forgetting, dogtags...

Gertrude Stein Lights the Lights.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Gertrude Stein Lights the Lights the devil what the devil what the devil did she care what the devil did she care if the devil was there well i care i care i care if she cares i care if she cares that...

Apparition.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Apparition Scratchy of moniker and claw, Prosaic as twig, yet all-round freak, What a sight, a stick that walks! Teacher measures, schoolkids shriek-- (Angular, all bony knees, She sways on broken...

Folded Cloth.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Folded Cloth Some tasks are so often performed the gestures so fluid as to define grace. Some tools are so well known the grasped implement scarcely grazes the flesh. Watching my...

'Shooting from the hip': Valerie Solanas, SCUM and the apocalyptic politics of radical feminism.
October 1, 2006... I consider that a moral act. And I consider it immoral that I missed. I should have done target practice. (1) --Valerie Solanas commenting on her near-fatal shooting of Andy Warhol in 1968 Valerie Solanas took...

The cradle arms of strangers.(Short story)
October 1, 2006... We always prayed for rain. The monsoonal rains that used to sweep in from the north in the summer, never came. There was only a short, bombastic burst of rain. A hard rain that crashed on our roof and gurgled in our down-pipes for a day and a...

Life in a Petri-dish: procreative liberty, choice, and the governance of women's bodies.
October 1, 2006... Introduction: Assisted reproduction and genetic technologies According to New Zealand fertility clinic figures, roughly 650 children every year are conceived with the aid of a Petri-dish. 130 of these children are born from the use of...

Sally.(Short story)
October 1, 2006... Sally Lee has just returned from Exotica. She goes there often and exactly as often returns. Sometimes she goes to the Sub-Continent. She goes on trains. She can sleep on any form of transport, mouth open, she is quite the snorer. Don't know...

'What is wrong with the Chinese?'.(Short story)
October 1, 2006... The last emperor had had the last laugh after all. The man who had engineered the fall of the Qing Dynasty had died in Beijing, a city he had hated, surrounded by his enemies, thousands of kilometres from his main power base of Guangdong. Now...

The view from Bombo Head.(Short story)
October 1, 2006... Seeing Bombo Beach for the first time was not a totally unmediated experience, since I had already seen it many times, and in all weathers, through the eyes and words of Charmian Clift. So there was a kind of double vision at work, in addition...

The yes lilies.(Short story)
October 1, 2006... Yvonne discards the sheets of garish tissue paper and arranges the closed lilies in a large vase. She appreciates their discretion. The tense, insinuative spearheads crowding uncomplainingly in this tight fit of a vase. She cups one of the...

This is my name.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... This is my name Now I have my family name back it does not fit so well, like a refugee changing names, their false papers. I will enter it slowly, syllable by syllable, immerse myself, try to avoid the cutting...

Mother Mother.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Mother Mother She fixes things before they are broken, using someone else's language as though it belonged to her, as though she didn't do it. How could she? She doesn't believe in Christmas either. Her beliefs...

Olive Trace.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Olive Trace [alpha]. Mama wanted to reach down into her bloated bloody brine bowl lift up and through her the animal wet hunger--was it all mouth? It was summer, Australia, back yard, a hills hoist dipped in ragged ...

The Prank.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... The Prank Her family is fond of pranks, she said she a left hand a black sheep I a killer of rabbits. Am I a wolf?. I have a knack for the role I have howled with the best of them So a measure of mischief ...

Snake in my laundry room (4am).(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Snake in my laundry room (4am) I'd like to be all Haiku about it, the story unfolding like an origami fan, exposing my Zen-like appreciation of its leather skin coffee-brown on laundry floor cool of...

Older Now.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Older Now Restored, the brass bed looks impressive where we lay in nightly ritual watching stars cascade through space--death, the ancients said. Once stars were our passion exploding two strangers...

Exits.(Poem)
October 1, 2006... Exits Didn't get to see the sun today, head in the clouds with rain pouring down. Windshield wipers thunk and I've already spent seven fifty on tolls watching red lights slowing for miles ...

Serpent's tooth.(Short story)
October 1, 2006... 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is...', King Lear Once, he brought home a pair of gold and emerald earrings, two small jewelled clips he found at a market in Hong Kong. He picked them up out of their gilded leather box and put them...