CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

BELLOW

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English

By Jaclyn R. Hymes

May 2015

ii

The thesis of Jaclyn R. Hymes is approved: ____________________________ ________________ Dorothy Barresi Date _____________________________ _________________ Mona Houghton Date _____________________________ _________________ Leilani R. Hall, Ph.D., Chair Date

California State University, Northridge

iii

DEDICATIONS For the silenced—now is your time to speak up. So many of these voices are yours, are parts of you.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the support, guidance, love, and knowledge from the following people: Dr. Leilani Hall. I remember the moment you told me I was too strong of a writer to not do a thesis and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I would not have gone through this process if it weren’t for your faith in me as a poet. Thank you for seeing the book within me. Thank you for pushing me harder than I’ve ever been pushed as a writer and a poet. Thank you for allowing me to find the identity of “poet” within me and accept that title. Without you, I would still consider poetry a hobby rather than something that consumes my entire life. Your dedication to making this manuscript the best that it could possibly be and the amount of times you had to read through these poems cannot be thanked enough. My gratitude for you is endless. You are more than a professor, director, and mentor. You’re my poet mother. Prof. Dorothy Barresi. You’re the first person to be interested in what I was doing with language and the unique ideas I had. Your encouraging and supportive nature has made working on poems and our workshops such a pleasurable experience. Thank you so much for your advice and for introducing me to so many poets I consider inspiration. Prof. Mona Houghton. Thank you for your editorial eye. Thank you for giving me the chance to experience a literary magazine from an editor’s perspective. I’ll never forget selling books with you at AWP. Thanks for telling me I have talent and your positivity. You are a treasure to work with in any respect. Tonie. Thank you for telling me I’m beautiful and a work of art. Thank you for your hugs that made it possible for me to carry on some days. Your faith in me was forever unwavering and you’re a gem. Susana Marcelo. My letter partner, my poetic sister. Thank you for being my voice of reason and being there those late hours when I’d ask for feedback or advice. Thank you for sharing your stories; I’m sorry our pasts are so similar and haunting, but that is why we write on. My classmates and poetry family, specifically Cody, Robin, Gina, Sanam and Megan. Your critical eyes and talents made these years at CSUN such a blast. I’m so privileged to have gotten to know you and read your work. You’re all like siblings to me now. Keep writing.

v

My brother. Thanks for putting up with my crazy and writing fury. You’ve read this manuscript as much as I have. I’m so lucky to have someone who shares a love of poetry and is my literal blood. You are never in my shadow; make your own spotlight. KM. Love always, TH. Mema and Papa. If it weren’t for your support, faith, and pride, I would have given up my dreams long ago. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you, Mema, for your love of books and words. Thank you to the following publications where previous versions of these poems appeared: Nailed Magazine: “Honest Hands” The Legendary: “Advice from Ghost to Departed,” Rescuing a Choking Ghost,” and “Plumage” Chaparral Poetry: “Mother-Daughter Rhetoric” Northridge Review: “Plumage”

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………………………....ii Dedications ........................................................................................................................ iii

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................ viii

Chiaroscuro ......................................................................................................................... 1 To My Children, Left Behind ............................................................................................. 2

Sarah Good on the Scaffold to Nicholas Noyes .................................................................. 3 Self-Portrait as Charybdis Sees Her Reflection .................................................................. 4

Side Effect: Headache ......................................................................................................... 5 Reverberate ......................................................................................................................... 6

Stuffed Animals .................................................................................................................. 7 Lucid ................................................................................................................................... 8

A Lesson in Silence: Dorothy “Dorcas” Good ................................................................... 9 Honest Hands .................................................................................................................... 10

On Keeping Secrets: Betty Parris ..................................................................................... 11 Ariadne Propositions Theseus ........................................................................................... 12

Advice from Ghost to Departed ........................................................................................ 13 What it Feels like to Become Rock ................................................................................... 14

Eye Sore ............................................................................................................................ 15 Silt & Stones ..................................................................................................................... 16

Lake Aubade ..................................................................................................................... 17 Rescuing a Choking Ghost ................................................................................................ 18

Giles Corey: Peine Forte et Dure ...................................................................................... 20 Self-Portrait as Faith Wavers & Transfers ........................................................................ 21 Entering the Underworld ................................................................................................... 22

Mother-Daughter Rhetoric ................................................................................................ 23 How to Grow a Forest ....................................................................................................... 24

Buoy .................................................................................................................................. 25 Namesake: Icarian Sea ...................................................................................................... 26

Why Hands Grow Calloused ............................................................................................ 27

vii

Self-Portrait as Zeus Prepares to Justify Abduction ......................................................... 28 The Word Traces Itself ..................................................................................................... 29

Recordkeeping .................................................................................................................. 31 A Lesson in Connotation .................................................................................................. 33

Plumage ............................................................................................................................. 34 The Problem With Smoke ................................................................................................. 35

Excavation Site ................................................................................................................. 36 If Homes had Fingerprints ................................................................................................ 37

Self-Portrait as Philomela Mourns Her Tongue ................................................................ 38 Notes ................................................................................................................................. 39

viii

ABSTRACT

BELLOW

By

Jaclyn R. Hymes

Master of Arts in English

In “The Laugh of the Medusa” Hélène Cixous argues, “woman […] must write about

women and bring women to writing” and through this “women return from afar” and

“break out of the snare of silence.” This collection of poetry serves to give agency to

those who have been silenced by phallocentric and oppressive societies; it presents an

examination and amalgamation of voices that speak—sometimes up and out of

bodies/mouths, sometimes for the first time. What results is empowerment and catharsis,

the opportunity to retell or revise history. Through a combination of feminist revisionary

mythmaking, rerecording the history of witch trials, and questioning what occurs in the

afterlife, the poems reject tradition and begin anew.

1

CHIAROSCURO There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen Earth did not rumble when you created the fissure. I pictured two legs—rusty hinged doors—pried open, nothing to make a body pleasantly shiver. As you nestled in the created cleavage, baited with threaded needle to grasp me and stitch the divide shut between a land of harvest and a land of shadowed stories, the light mimicked you— poured into the open fracture and hid in the corners of your realm. I hoped you would look up in order for the light from my world to bore into your eyes & take root in your retinas, but they were intent on return. Instead I turned to face you on pomegranate sheets. The light poured from my eyes & dissolved into your skin like a healing bruise; darkness crawled its way towards me— a hand slowly creeping its way up a thigh. This time I welcomed it, the way it entered me, the way the fingers made me stir.

2

TO MY CHILDREN, LEFT BEHIND

Besides, we have a woman’s nature—, powerlesss to perform fine noble deeds, but very skilled in all the forms of evil.

-Eurpides’ Medea

They say an oath is a hardened fist, but I watched your father’s fingers uncurl as we crossed toward flushed battlefields. To arrive I practiced emptying— multiple times, my blood drained, this body open until he reached relief while I labored for him— you. Know this: before I was your mother I stitched my family to the soil, whispered their names to the shovel. As I tucked your bodies into sleep undisturbed, it was not an act of my own banishment, it was redemption— we must all raise kingdoms with our hands to the earth.

3

SARAH GOOD ON THE SCAFFOLD TO NICHOLAS NOYES If I must tell, I will tell. My mouth has forgotten how to twist the shape of prayer. Do not mistake contortions for curses. Do not say my only job: to sweep the sky with sticks. I stood at door fronts palms open: one held lightness— owning nothing & the other darkness I consumed. I made my body a home. Each knot in my hair built the roof over my head. I kept warm from friction of tongue against teeth, the smoke from my pipe created a wall to block cold. I’d been tempted to drink the milk weighing heavily in my breasts. Unlike my neighbors I could not refuse myself. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, take my life & God will give you blood to drink. I bring fingers to my lips surprised this hymn is mine to say.

4

SELF-PORTRAIT AS CHARYBDIS SEES HER REFLECTION

1. With each inhale I learn my shape. 2. This thirst, this persistent mouth open deep, this toothless swallow inhale of mast, this suction of tangled briny pulp, this urge to expel, evict, this fevered thrash, this pressured system of pulse, of petulance, this collision of tide, this clash, this spin, this cyclonic eye fixated towards heaven, this mouth agape, this yell, this fury & swirl. 3. Contained flood.

5

SIDE EFFECT: HEADACHE

I don’t think you know what it means to be this well engineered time bomb

that is Woman. -Lauren Zuniga

When you swallowed mother to prevent my birth, she edged down your throat like a pinball, ricocheted off the walls of your esophagus & left dents. She never settled in your stomach; her body became a husk I peeled back & crawled from, inched my way up & navigated through the labyrinthine hedges of your brain, hoping you felt discomfort as I parted the foliage, nourishing on the wisdom & strength from mother which pulsed within me. In my incubation I watched your wars from the crystal balls of your eyes. In birth I burst through your skull like a geyser, your cranial cap a shield. Father, you might have an arsenal of lightning bolts, but my body is a thunderous storm. You should not have underestimated me as such a small disturbance.

6

REVERBERATE

You visit me in my sleep, tip-toe your way into my mouth down my throat to where my tonsils hang still as exhibits in a museum. When you crawl along my larynx, phantom vibrations resonate speech. Each time I wake up: an emptiness. A placeholder for the real thing. It / you escape me. The only thing I can do is repeat the shouting sun.

7

STUFFED ANIMALS

1. I no longer desire burial beneath the covers. The wind blankets me, carries whispers in its gusty breaths lay like pillow let me sink into your body. 2. Zeus tidies his bed by brushing gray sheets above to hide the mess from jealous eyes, molds me into a plush cow so overstuffed with cotton I look full and tender. I’m gifted twice to greedy hands, tail flicks to swat away fingers as though they were flies. 3. In a single moment I transform from cow into sheep. You may use this wool to make a blanket, but do not count on me for sleep.

8

LUCID after “Untitled #7” by Henrik Aa. Uldalen

Reluctant to lend body to slumber: open eyes are walls, throat sealed, & stomach a tightly wound bundle: in reverie opens poppy vortex. Birdhouse. Storage box. What was repressed swirls quicker than fever. Legs to navel eddy, body a swimming fish: to push back artifacts into purpose unconscious, to plug & prevent what is inside gladness that swells from spilling out.

9

A LESSON IN SILENCE: DOROTHY “DORCAS” GOOD

1. Ingersoll’s Tavern Three girls clasped their hands to throats. The mother, the mother slipped from mouths’ tight grip followed by my name. 2. Marked To learn to crawl: I watched a gifted snake slither my arm to suck on the lowest joint of my fore-finger where it drew a deep red spot. I inched up mother’s belly, cradled by its swells as I suckled. I left my mark: same ring of teeth discovered on Ann Putnam Jr. 3. Prison I sleep open-eyed, tacked to the wall. Iron chains clink lullabies: the only sounds to penetrate cell’s hardened wetness. My speech placed me here; now words clog my throat. I choke vowels that beg escape. I will not unfasten hold.

10

HONEST HANDS after the painting “In the Dresses Our Mother Made Us” by Emma Webster

Mother scolds us, but the wind softens her sound, lifts dirt from our dresses’ fabric. We hold hands: My dress stained with mud; your dress shimmers pastel paint & crushed hyacinth. My knees are scraped & the blood is silk in the backyard river. In your room we listen to our dresses dry— their clap & flutter, a mirror of my heart’s patterns. I use my finger to write invisible letters of confession— how I wish each time my body bleeds all

that makes me girl would leave with it— while you draw clouds & ask how womanhood feels. I tell you: the same way my dress can’t quite zip & the fabric snags. You place your hand in mine: squeeze as if to say I know as if to say your secret is safe.

11

ON KEEPING SECRETS: BETTY PARRIS As you wrote sermons & spoke the good word of the Lord, we snuck out behind the parsonage, cracked egg shells, swirled whites in a glass. We saw husbands & their status. You taught me lying, a sin, but forgot to warn of secrets, the strength of their pull, the Devil’s own magic forcing me

to fold in upon myself, to howl like hound, to lay stiff, to burn.

I could not speak truth— hovering over me your body, its worry punishment enough. I told you: Tituba said, First, shadowed man: course hands traced lips, smell of soot & cinnamon wafted through nose. Second, a hog or hound: wet snout pushed fingers fingers towards where candlelight yearned but could not reach.

12

ARIADNE PROPOSITIONS THESEUS

I watch father / open door / map pattern / footsteps / soft songs / of coming / of journey / listen / children / screams / echo / I diagram // how else / to escape / but gift / spool / tether

13

ADVICE FROM GHOST TO DEPARTED

1. What is ghost but body’s tenant? What is earth but body’s dwelling? 2. To expel skin: shimmy Out, removing a tight dress, tortoise shell. Step out & unravel as skein, untangle lace nerves. Or you could imagine skin as colander & sift freely through pores. Should that fail, give mouth permission to be wide, crawl up spiral staircase of spine. 3. You are exposed gossamer, feel the wind blow gently through you, weightless & vacant.

14

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BECOME ROCK after Paul Gustave Doré’s “Andromeda”

i. Auburn hair drapes & blends with rust sediment. Body bridges, stiffens into ridge. ii. From these shackles: crossed arms, a wrist forces hand’s unfolding. A signal: I am fixed here. Reaching— iii. I do not feel Perseus: his grasp. My head downcast. The monster spills himself at my arched feet. iv. What did the monster see reflected in gorgon’s eyes? This reversal: my freedom, his hardened frustration. v. Once tangled chains now solidified sky. Men look upon me— I rule them home.

15

EYE SORE

As I plucked the eyes of Argus, the optic nerve stretched out and snapped, clean, back towards the sleeping body. I placed the eyes into the plumage of the peafowl, hoping to draw you back to me, to attract you by the expanding train of blues and purples, make you come to me a husband, sing me lullabies to sleep.

16

SILT & STONES On the bank of the river I dug footprints into the wet silt, urged your shape to fill their empty & you came, sand framed a body I felt but could not see. As quickly as death first swept, the current churned imprints through the rush of its appetite. I watched the river deposit you across its bed & into its hungry mouth where you fused into stones. When I return I defy death’s contract with dirt. I place you in my pocket— you rattle, you roll above ground once again.

17

LAKE AUBADE Because we knew it was coming, the way skin prepares itself, reddens before a bruise, we sat you upright in bed, a rigid angle, knew if death tendriled its way into you, your throat would constrict until it left you, your body reclining— a basin became lake, full of present-past reflections. Once luminous life, a graveyard of lights.

18

RESCUING A CHOKING GHOST

Act I: Enter: your sickness, a film the consistency of moth wing slowly setting in on your body. You enter: a waxen figure in a museum. Florescent lights & fever melting you. Act II: I stand in the doorway: the whole hospital room a yawning mouth swallowing me & in bed you are a tongue pushing me down the throat. Act III: You attempt to speak but I cannot understand. When the words mix with my name they become steps towards descent. Act IV: Taunting funeral song on accordion plays: forcedbreath v e n t i l a t o r forcedbreath v e n t i l a t o r I stand: Watching you sink as if shovels had already dug your place.

19

Act V: To prevent surrender I remind you your lungs are birds that do not bellow to breathe.

20

GILES COREY: PEINE FORTE ET DURE

Miss Putnam swore the first time I was corporeal & whole, my physical presence drew her from slumber. I was like a gust, swallowed the room’s one flame, led her blind hand to the pen & hissed sign His book. She testified the second visit was my specter, as if all evil left my body hollow. I refused to stand trial, allowed their tongues to dance lies & blister with falsehoods. Instead I lay on dry grass, a circle around me & clamped my mouth shut, as if it were a gate to my land, to protect the deed from state’s claim. Not even my teeth, ground together like corn, made a sound as the magistrates piled stone after stone upon my chest board to pry a breathy aye or nay. At eighty, this is no sacrifice. These stones refilled me, stuffed me so full of defiance my tongue escaped my mouth. More weight, I spoke, my voice a traveling moth to light, & Salem, under its own weight, buried me in an unmarked grave.

21

SELF-PORTRAIT AS FAITH WAVERS & TRANSFERS for the woman at Westlake Health and Recovery Center

I knew she believed in god by her mouth, comfortable with prayer, bookended all sentences with please, with help me. For the first time, I believed & imagined his ears cotton balls absorbing every liquid request. I wanted to picture relief—the way it drifts, settles like ash upon devout. The first time she called out to god, searching for him, I wanted to tell her stark white does not make heaven, that she needs to read the language of constellations above the place where mountains graze sky, as if salvation is password protected. The first time I witnessed holy ritual she mapped one two three four corners of the doorway, one two three four steps to the hall, practice to keep the mind patient in waiting. I knew she stopped believing in god when she lay silent, an offer disrupting sterile stillness. I then thought I witnessed heavenly presence, as if to prove god’s existence, when a dead fly hovered in a beam of light-dust, an ascent. When I visited last, the room was empty save a moth with broken wing. Up & down, it beat away god’s urgency to claim property. The wing flit enough, opened. Moth lurched into good wind.

22

ENTERING THE UNDERWORLD after Traci Brimhall

Heretic, I searched: trapdoor cat pupil remnants of char where lightning met quotation marks on bed. ** I knew the place by veiled grief— salt particles & ash piles— the way I could only describe moon sliver as splintered wood. ** Here, bodies transparent— an emptying of faith.

23

MOTHER-DAUGHTER RHETORIC

1. Mother’s Solution

I heard you were dying so I came to you with wheat clenched between my fingers, fertile soil dry amongst my toes. I wanted to take my shears, cut flowers from their stems and shove them in your mouth to speed death’s process. You’d be the last Spring bloom—the river Styx your watering can.

2. Daughter’s Reaction

I came to you with sadness tucked into my pocket, my mind rewinding film against jagged edges to replay my fatal mistake, my fingers hardened by the decision to make fist or accept my fate. Because it was once your body, I kissed the fruit. Jellied tears swam their way into my mouth, whispered secrets of the dead: down here we carry our burden on elbows, float along on our grief.

24

HOW TO GROW A FOREST I used to imagine your body a maple tree. I pictured my hand a rake & dragged it down your spine, noticing every knot & combed through your hair as if it were a pile of leaves. I noticed your decay the day your bark chipped & left resin on my cheek. I tried to listen for the hum of hive that once lived in your stomach, but all I heard was its hollow. The last time I saw you, the moss pointed towards your new home, the way it sloped, loosely touching down your trunk the way a dress barely hangs on a collarbone. As I returned you to the earth, I made sure your feet felt soil; whispered to their bones you look like roots, now grow.

25

BUOY And they tell me that I can’t keep the ocean in my ribs, but I do. -Lacy Roop To make Artemis open her mouth again, move ships like chess pieces on the giant seaboard, I offered myself to the sea. Family secrets I stored between my lips are now woven

into kelp and coral, burrows into calcified city. Following the moon, my belly swells with tide. Coral makes a cage, keeps ocean between new ribs. When mother laments, my whale heart surfaces with a blow— lets her know I am permanent.

26

NAMESAKE: ICARIAN SEA

I watched as you fell: wax unclenching grip on feathers. I caught you in my lip, baring my shoulder as cradle rocking you in the moon’s rhythm. I offered you my pointed crest to suckle. As you slept I baptized you, a new name whispered in your ear.

27

WHY HANDS GROW CALLOUSED

Because humans shivered I tried to give ignition & placed blades of grass in hands. Friction failed. I tried to give ignition. Here’s what I could offer: my hands’ friction failed, skin thickened. Here’s what I offer now: parts of me saved from pecking, skin thickened sore from blistering punishment. Parts of me saved from pecking cling to sturdy rock as wind whistles through architecture of sore from blistering punishment. Sturdy, I cling to rock because humans shivered as wind whistled through blades of grass, but no heat.

28

SELF-PORTRAIT AS ZEUS PREPARES TO JUSTIFY ABDUCTION

Yes, inhale bull, exhale eagle. Yes, shadow orbit tries to dress Ganymede & Europa. Yes, pull Yes elsewhere yes anywhere yes where else from tongues amidst wishful fugues. Yes, gaze becomes grasp becomes hold becomes tender rocking transformation; yes, with tree root-claws, no black grin open snatch, no muffled mouth-feathered wings. Yes, safety on edge-receding clouds, storage for immortals. Yes, remember abduction from duco, defco: take care of, look after. Yes, this language; this judgment.

29

THE WORD TRACES ITSELF

I began as wicca as man as wizard then feminized to wicce to female to sorceress who hailed from verb wiccian to practice witchcraft— an uncertain term for all it contained. At witch I was given body— transformation I didn’t choose. From this became not woman but beast, sexless creature gifted to devil. His hands made me woman again, open & vacant to fill with good grace taken by the devil’s spirit: who forced cryptic words from the mouth & unlocked knees that lured men to forget wives & return stained. Woman wives & mourning mothers blamed for the spread of sickness & loss. This body; this word:

30

constructed history of mania & graceless mutinies.

31

RECORDKEEPING after Danez Smith

I don’t have words because I’m nothing

but a collection of evidence stories splintered in all directions.—Nicole Cooley

i. Alternate Names

1. ________: as in omitted history. 2. unintentional catalyst 3. blackened ash 4. darkness that darkens 5. witch until proven devil 6. titibe / Titibe / Titiba / Tittube / Tituba /Titiba / Tittapa /Titappa / Titabe / Titabee 7. prisoner: 7th of March 1691/2 to 1st of June 8. body husk 9. layered peels of brown-black 10. mystery

ii. Journey my only beginning lowercase. my only origin multiple choice question: a) West Indies b) Caribbean c) Yoruba d) Barbados e) all of the above f) none of the above. (no answer key) iii. Roles Salvationless servitude for Master Samuel Parris: I press knees to floor mouth full of strange tongue shackled to prayer. Caretaker to forgiveless children: Mistress Elizabeth knot of sheets, my lap cradle: I rock & rock & rock & church & fortune & tales & sweep dust

32

until spite filled mouths bite hand. iv Cotton Mather Says Evil: Tituba: Black man Black shift tawny shift tawny v. Etymology Yoruba name. Root: a. Titi: forever, endless b. Tituba: apologize, atonement vi. Examination of Titibe CAUSE OF DEATH: skin’s thirst for black

33

A LESSON IN CONNOTATION for Mike Brown & Ferguson

When given the option do not say threat, think how death shadows around a cavity of us, do not say stain. Instead, think of crows & their grouping, though it’s murder say huddle, say mass though it’s dissent; think of their feathers, their ruffle, their purple-black, their shine.

34

PLUMAGE

The night you came for mother, spotlights cracked from slits in the clouds. Pearl-feathered grace descended and crash-landed en pointe at center stage. The curtains opened with Tchaikovsky as you arched your long neck mirroring mother’s bends of repulsion, smothered her between your wings while she stiffened her legs—third position—until they gave way, grand plié. I broke from my egg the way rape is a fractured mirror. Watch me pluck your remaining plumes from between my teeth. I cherish mortality, the symbol of our pure division.

35

THE PROBLEM WITH SMOKE

We hang from noose & sycamore with slipknots ‘round our necks our eyes roll north, our bodies wind-sway as public display. Magistrates did not burn us, feared the patience of flames as dresses would singe, ankles free, breasts white in the blaze, exposed & illuminated, that our ashes would have drifted upward in undeserved ascension, despite being told we were no longer welcome. The smoke would have thickened & sprawled through Salem, desperate to tangle with the darkness within it.

36

EXCAVATION SITE for what is lost & what remains of Gallows Hill

In the sandbox, children build mounds & place pebbles as tombstones for fallen toy soldiers, unaware that beneath their play, the dirt was once ornamented by 19 Firebrands of Hell. Parents unafraid: no possibility of digging deep enough to uncover the paths that carts, burdened with bodies, etched through my dull blades. From swing sets: shoes brush sand & I remember the feet that swept dandelions naked until I became a field of green matches. Now my history: cemented over. But Danvers hosts twenty stone benches, one for each body & each death I bore witness.

37

IF HOMES HAD FINGERPRINTS after Jeremy Radin

Here is the home I have come back to: I open the roof like a dollhouse, fold myself like origami, and fit into the tiny space, a blanket in a crowded linen cabinet. Here is my bedroom where a pink tutu remains & a ballet slipper hangs en pointe rigor from its ribbon noose. I sneak down the hallway, a gallery of stark white paper. Here my parents’ bedroom, the white nightstand that sits in the corner keeping fragments of my skull, a guarded treasure from a back handspring gone wrong. In the carpet I trace the blood back to the chest. I tip toe down the stairs, a child’s dance. Here is the living room where my feet created cemented rug footprints, a spotlight lingers in the center where I emptied myself like a pitcher, poured myself into auditions for parts I never received. In every window I am reflected. I am four. I am seven. Here the walls pulse. So much of this house is me & we are haunted.

38

SELF-PORTRAIT AS PHILOMELA MOURNS HER TONGUE

Imprisoned here my voice will fill the trees. -Philomela, Ovid’s Metamorphosis

In your absence: my mouth shuts. Petals to replace you, their shape, their pink, similar but it takes a whole flower to learn bloom, to open. In your absence: my fingers full of story stitch fell. You were a trunk; trapped my crowded speech. In your absence: my body relearns open. My mouth a nest. Nightingale cries mingle with my own. A cacophony departs— the forest trembles.

39

NOTES

“Chiaroscuro”

This poem takes its inspiration from the Greek story of Persephone’s kidnapping and descent into the underworld.

“Sarah Good on the Scaffold to Nicholas Noyes”

“If I must tell, I will tell” comes directly from Ezekiel Cheever’s record of Sarah Good’s examination. The italicized part is what Good apparently screamed out to the judges/magistrates, particularly Nicholas Noyes, when they tried to elicit a final confession from her.

“Side Effect: Headache”

This poem recalls the Greek myth detailing the birth of Athena from Zeus’ head.

“Reverberate”

This poem draws its inspiration from the myth of Echo.

“Stuffed Animals”

This poem reinvents the myth of Zeus and Io.

“A Lesson in Silence”

After her mother, Sarah Good, was taken to jail, Dorothy “Dorcas” Good was accused of witchcraft. Due to the conditions in prison, her young age, the separation from her mother and family, as well as the overall hysteria, it is said that she went mad and no longer spoke. The words about her snake and her bite come from Deodat Lawson’s description of her examination at the Prison-Keeper’s house. Information taken from: Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt edited by Bernard Rosenthal, Cambridge University Press.

“On Keeping Secrets: Betty Parris”

Many scholars of the Salem Witch trials argue that the hysteria and accusations were caused from both boredom and fear. The girls would play with venus glasses, in which they would crack eggs over a surface and the whites would

40

reveal their husbands. This poem plays with the idea of fear in a heavily religious household. Information taken from A Delusion of Satan by Francis Hill, Doubleday.

“Advice from Ghost to Departed”

This poem was heavily influenced by Aracelis Girmay’s Kingdom Animalia.

“What it Feels Like to Become Rock”

Though based off the painting by Gustav Doré, the poem recalls the Greek myth of Andromeda.

“Eye Sore”

This poem presents the Greek myth of Hera and the peacock.

“Silt & Stones”

The lines “churned them through / the rush of its appetite” was adapted from lines in Aracelis Girmay’s poem “Dear Minnie, Dear Ms.”

“Rescuing a Choking Ghost”

The title of this poem comes from the title of a collection of poems by Karen Finneyfrock.

“Giles Corey: Peine Forte Et Dure”

On September 19, 1692, Giles Corey was pressed to death for refusing to stand trial. Knowing he would be convicted and/or executed, his decision served the purpose of trying to prevent the state from claiming his land as the deed had just been written to his son in-law. Peine Forte et Dure is the French phrase for hard and forceful punishment. This was a method of punishment or torture in which anyone who stood mute would have heavy stones pressed on their chest until they plead or died.

“Mother-Daughter Rhetoric”

This poem revisits and revises the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.

“To My Children, Left Behind”

This poem invests itself in Eurpides’ Greek tragedy Medea.

41

The phrases “stitched my family from the soil,” “whispered their names to the shovel,” and “sleep undisturbed” were largely influenced by the poem “When the Clock Strikes Six Feet” by Sarah Myles Spencer.

“Buoy”

This poem invests itself in the Greek myth of Iphigenia.

“Namesake: Icarian”

This poem utilizes the Greek myth of Icarus.

“Why Hands Grow Calloused”

This poem is based on the Greek myth of Prometheus.

“Self-Portrait as Zeus Justifies Abduction”

This poem is based on the numerous myths where Zeus abducts and rapes nymphs or boys. He often transforms into different animals or figures to disguise. Ganymede and Europa are both characters he abducts and/or rapes. Lines 13 and 14 reference the Greek etymology of the word abduction. The root of the word is “defco,” which “duco” comes from. “Duco” is a Greek verb that translates to take care of, look after.

“The Word Traces Itself”

The Latin roots for witch and the etymology are taken from the numerous entries for witch in the Oxford English Dictionary.

“Recordkeeping”

#6 in the section Alternate Names contains all of the various spellings of Tituba’s name in the legal and historical documents from the duration of the trials. Tituba just happens to be the one that stuck. Names gathered from Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt edited by Bernard Rosenthal, Cambridge University Press. In Yoruba, where it is said Tituba might have been from, Titi, a common female name means endless or never ending. Tituba is a root verb meaning to atone or to apologize. Information gathered from: “Purloined Identity: The Radical Metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village” by Veta Smith Tucker. During the time of the Salem Witch trials, tawny often meant Indian.

42

“Plumage”

This poem is concerned with the Greek myth about Leda and Zeus as well as Leda’s daughter Clytemnestra.

“The Problem with Smoke”

In Salem, they did not burn witches at the stake due to Puritan beliefs of modesty. The flames would take too long to burn the body and thus the bodies would be naked and exposed for all to see. Ironically, they were okay with hanging the bodies for public display.

“Excavation Site”

While the exact location of Gallows Hill is disputed by historians, most agree that the current location is now a playground. “Firebrands of Hell” comes from Nicholas Noyes’ comment regarding 8 bodies that hung from the gallows after the final execution.

Danvers is the location of the Salem Witch Trials memorial. This memorial was erected in 1992 and is comprised of 20 stone benches inscribed with the names, deaths of the executions, and the cause of deaths for those killed at Gallows Hill. Information taken from: http://www.salemweb.com/memorial/memorial.shtml

“If Homes Had Fingerprints”

The first line of this poem comes from Jeremy Radin’s poem “Pyramid of Bison.”