Millie and Emma – A Reverse Nonet

One

Then two

Exactly

Identical

Without permission

Now brought into being

They refuse their genetic

Wiring, rebelling, and seeking

What the petri dish sought to deny

This nonet was written for Hélène’s “What do you see?” Weekly Challenge (the picture above is from this prompt) as well as for the Go Dog Go Cafe Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge. Devereaux Frazier and Beth Amanda’s prompt: Describe a recent world event without saying what the event actually was.

Can you guess what the reverse nonet is about? The title names (for the girls in Hélène’s picture) comes from this article.

In my writing group, I read a short piece about a family who tried to clone their car but ended up cloning their son. It turned out their (original) son was a serial killer and the parents had to decide whether to allow the clone to live or not, unsure if it would become a killer as well. It was a difficult decision for the parents – I won’t tell you the ending in case he sells this fascinating story.

In researching this poem, I hadn’t realized that animal cloning has been happening in all parts of the world since the 1960’s. I had thought gene manipulation and cloning were relatively recent events. It makes me wonder about the long terms outcomes of humans “playing god” – hastening genetic change that used to take generations to manifest. Not that we’re recreating Jurassic Park – at least not yet! (This blog post I found recounts this scene from the movie, “Jurassic Park”, and also has some interesting thoughts about cloning and writing.)

So, cloning is the world event my poem is about. Maybe I should have made it a double reverse nonet?

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