Marcel Currin has been rebelling against poetry since late last year when he realised he was just taking it all a bit too seriously. You'll find his poems printed proudly in the anthologies Swings & Roundabouts, The Earth's Deep Breathing and Poetry Pudding, or lurking in past issues of Poetry NZ, North & South, Takahe, Spin, Catalyst and JAAM. Marcel is also to blame for a sort of poetry page called The Petri Dish that rounds off every issue of Bravado. He lives in Tauranga.
Doomsday
The end of the world totally sucked. Think of those movies where aliens blow the shit out of everything, it was like that, but worse. There was no time for resistance, it was straight to business, they just turned up in their big spaceships and started melting us with horrible, silent guns. One slow sweep across the land and everyone melted. The entire human race: soup.
Although, it was kind of funny that they started in Timaru. Who knows why. They flew all the way across the galaxy and came to... Timaru. In the midst of all the melting we had to laugh at the Americans who were indignant that the aliens hadn’t gone straight to Washington D.C. It was worth getting a Sky subscription in those final moments just to see the White House journalists scratching their heads. An awful way to end the human race, but satisfying too, from that perspective.
Parent Plus 1.0
Upgrade my kids? What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with my kids, I said. The salesman flashed his teeth at me. Of course not, he said. But don’t you sometimes wish you could just... turn them off? How about those times when logic takes a picnic, when you can’t explain that it’s for their own good, when you just want to, oooooh! slap some sense into them! What if you could put everything on pause and upload some common sense into those exhausted little heads.
I folded my arms.
Your youngest is, how old, one? What if you could get a printout that tells you what that crying is all about? Is it a headache? A nightmare? Nappy rash? Take the guesswork out of parenting. Plus, our premium option package comes with this nifty extra feature that lets you know exactly how long until their next toilet stop. You’ll never be caught out again.
He had my attention.
It’s a simple hardware installation with a software package and regular upgrades, full support and a twelve month guarantee. Oh, and you must be the wonderful mother?
My wife had come to the door. I said, he can tell us when they’re gonna wet their pants.
She said, Windows or Mac?
Windows, at this stage, he said. He blinked several times.
And that’s why I married her.
