A study in anatomy<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
If you believe humans have shrunk through history,<\/p>\n
that the giant in our troupe is a throwback to an age<\/p>\n
of towering heroes, what does that make me?<\/p>\n
A creature of the future? An advanced stage<\/p>\n
of human development? It gets a laugh. I play<\/p>\n
the trumpet with my feet, embroider with my toes.<\/p>\n
The crowd gawps in wonder. I tell them, one day<\/p>\n
people with limbs will be on display in freak shows.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At one time a heifer with two heads was the star turn<\/p>\n
on the bill \u2013 both mouths chewing cud. She died<\/p>\n
of colic. Now a monkey fills the top position.<\/p>\n
He resembles me in size, which attracts the odd snide<\/p>\n
remark. Not that I care. If we\u2019re talking similarity,<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen many a looker-on scratching at his balls.<\/p>\n
That jaw cracking a nut, that stooped frame, free-<\/p>\n
hanging arms \u2013 who\u2019s aping who? They\u2019re animals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Earlier I had tea with the acquisitive Mr Hunter.<\/p>\n
\u2018Living things have a tendency,\u2019 he said, \u2018to deformity.\u2019<\/p>\n
He wants my twisted carcass, this connoisseur<\/p>\n
of oddities. He talked about \u2018variation\u2019 and why<\/p>\n
there are so many living creatures. That\u2019s heresy<\/p>\n
I told him. He smiled complacently. I like his proposition.<\/p>\n
It would be something to help in a future discovery.<\/p>\n
Twenty pounds cash. I have no love for this skeleton.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0Simon Collings<\/strong> lives in Oxford, UK. He has published both poetry and short fiction. For more information see http:\/\/simoncollings.wordpress.com\/\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A study in anatomy If you believe humans have shrunk through history, that the giant in our troupe is a throwback to an age of towering heroes, what does that make me? A creature of the future? An advanced stage of human development? It gets a laugh. I play the trumpet with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6641"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6644,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641\/revisions\/6644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}