A Shadow in Yucatan Read Online Free Page A

stacked.
    Dachau they thought
was a bone-meal plant.
    So it was.
    What do they do with
the corpses? Sixteen an hour, eight hours a day, six days a
week?
    Holy Mary, midwife,
mother, do you hold a murdered baby by its feet?
    ‘ Second floor at the
top of the stairs’
    Calvary at least would
give you time to think, and if it were a sharp-stone path you’d
need to watch your feet…
God, do you care when we thirst? When we twist?
Doesn’t. Never did. Fuckin doesn’t exist.
Mary, bleedin Mary knows, but she just sits and weeps...
When, oh when will someone somewhere speak?’
    ‘ That’s right. In
here...Now sit y’self down. We’ve all been waiting for the eighth
to form the group...’
    Seven febrile
spinsters sit and suck their cheeks, extenuate, then elongate, in
the bowl of a quivering spoon...
Shouting into silence, sinking into sibilance, with canny careful
grins...
They are clad in colour
    All colours
here are black.
All movement is mechanical.
All gestures calculate.
    ‘ Come in,
sit down, we are expecting thee... ’
The high priest dons his black mass mask, prepares the
surgery...
    ‘ Say, y’know...I
find it kinda close...I’ll jus open the window so we can breathe a
bit...’
    The embroidered
air hums an octave of sea.
the notes are single salted, threaten to dissolve...
benedictus, benedicat, the embedded memory!

    Two feet on a
beach with phosphorescent skin,
immaculate with winking rings on nail, on anklebone...
The exploding dawn, the hissing surf, the welling wet mud...
Further off the tip-toe crab that drinks the timely surf, washed
back from apprehension, and the terrors of the earth, to float
beneath a carapace, and withdraw its periscope.
    The blue bottle
water, and all that lovely lace, squandered on the menstrual moon,
with her hidden and pouting face.
    If torn, it
re-forms.
If tattered, it refracts.
When the scurrilous sea abandons it, it furs the collars of the
earth...
    ‘ Meaning is
in Being. Unconscious that you Are.
Willing is distortion.
I am neither near, nor far...’
    ‘Oh God! Thank
God! I could dance or weep.
Oh Lord forgive my anger, blessed Jesu, bear with me.’
    'Now honey, never
mind. Have a Kleenex...don’t you cry. You’ll be through in
half-an-hour...it really doesn’t hurt....Now where’s you goin?’
    ‘ Is this the way
out?’
    ‘ You looking for the
powder room? Honey, are you sick?
    ‘ No I feel
marvellous. I just want the street.’
    ‘ You wanna leave?
But what about your fee? You came all the way from
Florida...’
    ‘ It was worth it. I
promise. You go on without me.’

Going Home

    Hawk. High
strider.
For whom do you churn buttermilk, who drinks your cloudless
cream?
What power tilts your balance of wing?
Would you give no thanks for my shoulder of rest?
    I’d give my right hand
for your eye, for your nest,
for your claw of calamity, a beak-full of blood,
to spring without falter, to dip without guilt...
Hawk, sky serpent, will you teach me intent?

    Salmon salut. What
penetrates your impervious skin,
your scales of incision, your pivoting fin?
Fish, can you listen while you swallow the tide
convert the sea’s order, placate its demon?
    Stay steady and
answer, while you sieve through a gill
as fine as a feather, the Omnipotent Will.
What gave you the courage to defy, single handed, the Flood and
Creation?
Salmon leap up and teach me to swim.
     
    Fawn, frost-bitten,
born before spring;
unprepared for extinction, without scale or wing.
From the muzzle of your mother, you steam your rough faith that
springs a quick skip to the grass’s bent swath..
Show me the marrow of innocence.
    In the vortex of the
waters we shall need the salmon’s skill;
in pounding confusion, the hawk’s high pennant quill...
    Child, when you set me
from your shoulder
will you teach me how to live?

The Landlady
    Miriam Martins
is eating bagels off the blue chequered cloth that gives a
laundered look to the wilting morning.
It is ten only; already the trees flag and hang out