Mary Kathryn Arnold
Abigail; or, After Reading Carol Shields' Dressing Up for the Carnival
Exodus 2:5 "And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it."
I see England , I see
France, I see Abbie's
underpants. We stood on
a salmon-coloured
bridge, overlooking a
green river, debating
what was beneath us.
Abbie Lane's fountain
was there, and something
dead, a few condoms next
to the carrion. Before,
we stood at hooker park,
me dressed as the sheriff,
a plastic star painted
silver on my chest, and
you, no tin soldier, my
deputy. By the phone
booth, I told you a joke.
You wanted me to arch
my back, lordosis
your favourite position
(years before I took up
yoga), you wanted to
remember me as the
girl straddling the train tracks,
skirting the horizon,
piss on the tracks. I said,
"What did the tailor say
to the guy handling the
rattlesnake?" You said, "What?"
and I answered, "She
charmed the pants off of him."
Rita
Psalm 50:11 "I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine."
The guests at the dinner party
arrive two by two. The wolves are
slow to catch on to the animal
bridge (not so the deer and elk), but
once they do, look out. Mother
Nature sits on the other side
of her castle wall, reading The Lines
of My Hand. She watches the
Clydesdale horse march in (limping with
a case of mange), staining his brown
legs with goldenrod. The pigs trounce
on the lupin leaves, shod in boots
for oil slicks. More to the air
than to anyone in particular,
Mother Nature says "You're too thin."
Even with the mountains, she has
every need of her masonry,
so she gives the order as she
rings the bell: "Pull up the drawbridge!"
Vivian
Gen. 7:14 "They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort."
Gold, silver, and lead, those are her
options - which is the right choice? But
we're getting ahead of ourselves.
This is after the beginning
of the world, after the arrow
pointed the way, after the key
turned in the door. You would expect
God made the sun and the sea first,
just like you'd think the first woman's
name was Eve, or maybe even
Lilith, but no, she was Vivian,
the talking bird, and she had as
her companions not the night and
the day, but a trivet, a wok,
and a wooden spoon. But now, sufficed
(somehow some vegetables and
a bowl were found in the beginning
too), she stands in front of the vessels,
thinking she'd rather fly than talk
just now. She spreads her wings, mulling
it over, flying straight into the
simoom. Overcome by the heat
of the desert, she decides to
have what she is not, settling on
the gravity of lead. As her
beak opens to voice her desire,
the snake enters the garden in
another country; where it is
playtime in the nursery, the
teacher gets out the eraser.
Yoko
Song of Sol. 7:4 "Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus."
Before the flood, before the winter,
before the pond froze over, there
was simply the tower she lived in,
and below it, a secret well,
a mouth in the earth. Against their
parents' wishes, children would run
round, searching for it, somehow never
discovering its depths. Now she
looks out the window of the
campanile, to see the ice skaters
circling the pond. Or not exactly
circling, since the pond is in the
shape of an ellipse. She cannot
remember whether she chose to
hide herself away in the tower,
like a sannyasi, or whether,
years ago, someone brought her here.
As the snow begins to fall on
the skaters, she wonders, by what
alchemy does nothing become
something? Or, this Sunday morning,
how many of the figures skating
below her are carrying Saturday
night's ticket stubs in their pockets?
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