The Inventor

The Inventor

by Evelyn Deshane

My man has machine fingers,
the kind without sparks, no
electricity. He can play the Theremin
& make me sing without touching me.
He builds contraptions in the attic
without making any money, only talking
to the birds. So his music plays in the background
of B movies. He is the sci-fi stunt man,
the Tesla's coil in Frankenstein. His old stores
of metal will never be smithed, the house
never renovated, & my garage door will never work.
His machines pile with rust. And who thought
wings out of wax were a good idea once?
Your son never knew limits, but you

my Daedalus, never understood patents.

* * *

Evelyn Deshane has appeared in Plenitude Magazine, The Rusty Toque, and is forthcoming in Tesseracts 19: Superhero Universe. Their chapbook, Mythology, was released in 2015 with The Steel Chisel. Evelyn (pron. Eve-a-lyn) received an MA from Trent University and currently studying for PhD at Waterloo University. Visit them at: evedeshane.wordpress.com

What do you think is the attraction of the fantasy genre?

For me, fantasy (along with all of speculative fiction) as always been about imagining something different than what we've currently been given. For something like sci-fi, that could mean imagining a different future for a group of people and new technology; for fantasy, I think there's an attraction to looking back at already documented history with a new point-of-view or magical twist. Fantasy is also fun. Who doesn't want to write about dragons or magic or something else equally enchanting? Everyday worlds can be boring. Fantasy is a nice, and well needed break.