Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Moulting Season

2012; Duke University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/07990537-1665596

0799-0537

Danielle McShine,

Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity

I will die in Paris—and I don't shy away—perhaps on a Thursday, as today is, in autumn.—César Vallejo“I have tired of reading the strange fictions of my body,”Borges did not say, nor did Vargas Llosa,And García Márquez would refute this also,Despite the humble ways the labyrinths unfold,Like letters to a snail, pressed to the ground, listening,While the white colonels wait in our pinked mouths,Indifferent to death or prevarication.“I will die on a Wednesday in Paris,”Neruda did not say, nor did Vallejo,Who died here on a Friday, and not the day he predicted.Whether it rained is moot; at any rate, it was spring.But I can say that I do not knowHow his soul, always whole, found itselfScattered like blossoms over the blistered streets.Whatever you think you are,Love will shatter that,Split open the skinOf your ungainly ripening.However hard the shell,It can be outgrown,As you ache beyond the crabby self,More yourself than ever before.Maybe you'd be like a snake,Slipping out of a former life—Stalking shadow, ghost,Mottled memory, singleBrief season unremembered—To slough off what traps youIn the faded habit,Too small now for living in.Think of those unlovely thingsWhich are not born themselvesBut burst into wing, as butterfly,As battimamzelle, hungry, glittering.In that house at the bottom of the world,The rainy season flew in roaches.We squirted spray on their scuttling brown bodies,Spray—sickening and sweet—that we did not inhale.Their crazed flutter slowed to rest on a far wallWhere they looked at us, dreamingOf their notched legs crawling over our faces.In that house at the bottom of the world,The waters rose outside the front gate.Elsewhere, perched on skinny concrete legs,Houses lifted their skirts, while carsBecame boats, floating downstream,Sons became sailors, wading to anchor them,Roads became rivers that led to the sea.Every angel fills the bathtub with snowflakes,Washes their angel hair twice a fortnightAnd once a century. The iron maidens' razors are all dull.They shave their legs and the tops of their heads.Fishes mouth the words to Elvis songsAnd prayers taste like Manhattan in the dark.The maidens wanted flowers and sex,Mystery and abandon, openness and overtures.Passionate nuns and single bridesCongregate in the churches of nevermore.Do it to me one more time, herald the angels.Hearken to their words, harp on every sentence.Night mosaics the garden of afternoon.How I wonder what you are, little star.A widget, a gadget, a thingamajig, a screw,A turn and also the screwdriver, masterpiecesPraise-wintering in the grassy window of fame.Everyone stares at the tattoo of her modesty.Strident tridents forebode the whale's fate:Moby and Ahab, amen and aha,Jonah always looking over his shoulder,The woman alone in herroom/studio/home/bedroom/office/love nest/cell/place of reverie/etc.Not that she is unfriendly,As crabs are not unfriendly,As beetles are not unfriendly,As mice are not unfriendly—Scared, and maybe just lookingFor the cheese or the hole to escape into.Herbal remedies for failure:Hibiscus root infused in a soup of tears.The breeze blows and the gecko is smashedBetween the door jamb and the door frame,Pressed like a fleshy flower, the heartSlammed out. It didn't know what hit it.Wait. Listen. A murmur rises fromThe stand of men, heads inclined to shoreWhere a body rests in sleep too soon come,Breath drained like sand from a corbeaux's claw.He reads the humid message of her skin,Sun-warmed and still caressed by the long waves:A smooth fruit plucked before its ripening could begin,A melody no musician ever laid on staves.Orpheus, chase the silence, the brittle rushOf loose-fringed branches in the air,The stale percussion of husky coconutsThat knock and knock, surrender-ing to the current of their one desire—Ingrained—to seed a life elsewhere.Sweet tongue of poet, honey in the airThat bees must follow. Clusters of hummingbirdsStop flitting, drop fluted to his palm,Stunned by the iridescent quickness nearAs lovers' breath, the lilt of his warm wordsThat soothes each creature like a balm.Blood flushes to his face. He makes no soundAs he gazes on the fertile dead.Receding like a root into the ground,Here lies the one to whom his fate is wed.Night-dark, a future opens at his feet,A yawning realm his voice must bring to flower,If the gods let him approach, adjust a pleatOf destiny, enchanted by his power.I was liming at the rumshop with Orpheus,Telling him I found his name preposterous.“It makes you think of orphans or untimely death.That's no kind of name to have if you want success.”And that Orpheus, man, he was up to the test,Improvised a whole new song in just a single breath.The menfolk bought more drinks and got obstreperous'Cause their ladies started batting eyes and making a fussOver a man in beat-up jeans who crooned to his guitar,So I paid the bill and said, “Let's get back to the car.”But Orpheus is nothing if not fond of fameEven if it costs him an arm and a legOr the skin off his back, he likes to see the ladies beg.“Come on, Orpheus,” I said, “this isn't a game.”“Sure,” he sang, while waving like somebody famous.When a few men pushed their chairs back, he let fly a holy cuss.