Half-light by Frank Bidart

Author:Frank Bidart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

III

I covered my arm with orchid juice.

With my hatchet I split a mangrove stick

from a tree, and sharpened it.

I covered the killing stick with orchid juice.

We were camping at Marunga Island

looking for oysters. This woman I was about to kill

at last separated herself from the others

to hunt lilies. She walked into the swamp, then

got cold, and lay down on sandy ground.

After I hit her between the eyes with my hatchet

she kicked, but couldn’t

raise up.

With my thumb over the end of the killing stick

I jabbed her Mount of Venus until her skin pushed

back up to her navel. Her large intestine

protruded as though it were red calico.

With my thumb over the end of the killing stick

each time she inhaled

I pushed my arm

in a little. When she exhaled, I stopped. Little by little

I got my hand

inside her. Finally I touched her heart.

Once you reach what is

inside it is outside. I pushed the killing stick

into her heart.

The spirit that belonged to that dead woman

went into my heart then.

I felt it go in.

I pulled my arm

out. I covered my arm with orchid juice.

Next I broke a nest of green ants

off a tree, and watched the live ants

bite her skin until her skin moved by itself

downward from her navel and covered her bones.

Then I took some dry mud and put my sweat

and her blood in the dry mud

and warmed it over a fire. Six or eight times

I put the blood and sweat and mud

inside her uterus until there was no trace of her

wound or what I had done.

I was careful none of her pubic hair was left

inside her vagina for her husband to feel.

Her large intestine stuck out several feet.

When I shook some green ants on it, a little

went in. I shook some more. All of it went in.

When I whirled the killing stick with her heart’s blood

over her head, her head

moved. When I whirled it some more, she moved

more. The third time I whirled the killing stick

she gasped for breath. She blew some breath

out of her mouth, and was all right.

I said, You go eat some lilies. She

got up. I said, You will live

two days. One day you will be happy. The next, sick.

She ate some lilies. She walked around, then

came back and slept. When laughing and talking women

woke her she gathered her lilies and returned to camp.

The next day she walked around and played,

talked and made fun, gathering with others oysters

and lilies. She brought into camp what she

gathered. That night she lay down and died.

Even the gods cannot

end death. In this universe anybody can kill anybody

with a stick. What the gods gave me

is their gift, the power to bury within each

creature the hour it ceases.

Everyone knows I have powers but not such power.

If they knew I would be so famous

they would kill me.

I tell you because your tongue is stone.

If the gods ever give you words, one night in

sleep you will wake to find me above you.

•

After sex & metaphysics,—

… what?

What you have made.

•

Infinite the forms, finite

tonight as I find again in the mirror

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