The Imaginarium

“The Imaginarium” is a speculative nonfiction novel that explores the use of the technology, an Imaginarium helmet facilitated by the drug Imaginaria, to allow the user to re-configure their memories. Search for answers, while dealing with past traumas. It is a technology for patients whom EMDR has failed. Gussy, a constantly aspiring author, has recently gone thru a major break-up, job loss, and the death of her Grandmother. She discovers while cleaning out her house that her paternal Great Grandmother Shoshana was possibly trans. Gussy is recommended to use the Imaginarium to explore her past traumas, but instead uses it to construct her own memories of Shoshana, someone she has never met but she has more in common with than she realized.

First Poem for Shoshana

Great grandmother,

Shoshana,

Are you also my trancestor?

Am I you

The you

You always aspired to be

For 33 years I was afraid of me.

My sister is named after you. 

She is transphobic, 

Is she afraid of herself?

Is her shunning of me, 

Just the fear of herself?

---

Lost Comrades

Someone should have warned me 

that much of the violence of the revolution 

would be self-inflicted 

That state violence happens 

in suicide

What is blood if it is not compatible? 

If it is let, 

Then spoils?

Then the one who adorns the blood

Allows it to flow freely 

I have lost comrades

From no means other than the hand

Their own hands

Yet also the invisible hands

That leave bruises on the bones

The skulls

The pelvis

The feet

The joints

The necks

Necks short to duck the head

Necks long to scream and see over the crowd

Necks held up in pride

Necks held down as the state brandishes us

Necks bent from the rope

Ceilings meant to protect us

Roof over our head

Illusions of Safety

I remember the ceiling

Of my apartment(s) when I received the new(s)

I wonder if my ceiling is similar to that

Of my comrades

Who bent the ceiling

To commune with the ancestors