OF THE SPIDER WOMAN

TALES

Woman of many words

She loved him with words, torrential. She threw the words down from skyscrapers, cathedral spires, belfries of country churches, thatched eaves of peasant homes. The words tumbled and clattered and zoomed and slithered and flew over tin roofs, tops of trees, umbrellas, they tickled the ears of children and dogs and elephants in the zoo, and made them dance and wriggle and prance, they rained down on rivers and ponds and oceans, rode on the backs of turtles and seals, and the whale heard them and echoed them in arctic waters cold and deep, and some words fell on the sand for snails to nibble and crabs to drag to their lairs. Her words would not stop coming, so now his ears were full of them, clogging his nose, cramming his pockets, his shirts ballooned with them, they squished in his shoes, they littered his bed, the carpet, the table where he worked, every cup in his kitchen brimmed with them. They fell from the trees when he took a walk, every flower he passed called them out to him, even the birds could not stop chattering as they flew from earth to tree to earth again, the red dragonflies spelled her words in the wind, and the fireflies blinked them all night long. Still her words came, an endless joyous rain, he swam in its flood, he filled his mouth with them, and still she loved him and loved him, her words flooded his mind and stole his sleep.

July 19, 2008

Tales of the Spiderwoman

17

Tale of the Spiderwoman

Pyres of leaves burn away summer. Cicada shells pile under the marsh grass, still memorial of seasons past. Ive no words for these lean boys and slender girls pass by my window drinking the sun on their golden skin. Apple-breasted women with melons in their bellies snitch sprigs of basil from my herb pots, and curious-eyed strangers scan the veiled glass for glimpses of my blurred face, but hurry off with any strangers indifference. How endless the mazes I inhabit, layer on layer of silence shield me. Odd monsters breed here, I warrant. I myself daily grow smaller and smaller until almost invisible. Fuzz on my skin, my eyes multiply a hundredfold in this darkness and split the light in thousand prisms and now I can see whats before and after. I become light as air, my sweetness distils to fatal potency. I practice a patience vaster than ten worlds. I wait.

Merlie M. Alunan

28

If, at last, the merest rumor of your scent warms the air drifting to my door, I shall shake my thin thighs loose. My hair will grow back in the usual places, my eyes regain their focus, my ears will hear words and speeches again. Cicadas will chirr live under the marsh grass. Perhaps it would be June, the green returning to the trees. When your shadow crosses my door, please enter without fear. But remember not to ask where Id been or what had fed me in this empty room curtained with fine webs of silk. Ignore the seethe of all my memories. Come, take my hand. I am human at your touch.

Tales of the Spiderwoman

29

To teach a heart
For Felipe Lim, my accupuncturist

Your heart, he says, planting a needle on a point between her brows, beats too fast. Too strong. Works too hard. More needles. Side of her neck, her throat, her shins, her feet, on her back. Immobilized by the needles, she wants to tell him This heart has always chosen its own pace, wont slow for anyones sake, not even its own. Makes its own rules as hearts have done these ages now, maybe till all time. Quite beyond reason, this heart listens to no one, not even to me, deaf to everyone but itself

but she says nothing, closes her eyes, watching behind her lids violet suns fold in, unfold, swirl, burst upon a world known only to herselfcaves of her fear, ridges of her sorrow, thickets of rage where sharp-clawed leopards prowl in great hunger. Tissue and blood, bone and fleshfragile remnants of her ebbing dayswhy her heart now flails wild like fish caught in a drought, thrashing in the mudflats of her memories.

Tales of the Spiderwoman

37

His fingers count landmarks among her ribs, down her spine. More needles. For hearts ease, he declares. Now shes a secret he reads too easily with his salient eyes. She sighs. Bless the live air streaming in rivers of her veins, bless trees, the quarter moon, the purple suns swirling in the dark behind her eyes. Bless earth, bless wind and fire, bless rain. Bless these thin needles in her throbbing pulses. For when alls said and done, who can tame a heart wild in its cage of mortality? Still she lies, rehearsing faith in his deft device. Who can teach a heart what the heart desires?

Merlie M. Alunan

38

The neighbors geese

He keeps them fenced in, together with the fattening pig, a few chickens hes raising for the pot, some lanka trees his flock of five white geese. Hed kept a dog there once, a lonely hungry brute, snarling and barking all day, and an ewe which lambed in due time. One cold wet night while he slept, the dog broke its leash and killed the lamb. Ewe and dog are gone nowto their fates, I guess. But there are still the geese. He keeps the geese, he says, to guard his few trees, the pig, the chickens scrabbling in the grass, the thumb-sized patch of gravel he had claimed under Gods heaven as his. If geese had business of their own other than this, hed never think of asking.

Merlie M. Alunan

72

In his little gravel patch, the wind blows in as anywhere else. Leaves, twigs fall as they would. Prowler cats break in, stray dogs snaffle past, rats, mice scuttle through, sometimes a toad hops around toad fashion to his water trough. The geese announce intrusion in raucous gabble without any distinction. Or perhaps its just goose talk, Bad food here, mate, and the rest squawk back, You bet, not enough here to make crap! Goose laughter, loud, loud. If geese were like us, theyd be more polite. What I always say is keep only what comes to your door freely and in peace. Id say it to him, but hes too full of his own wisdom I doubt hell hear me out. Id tell him, keep only who would stay, willingly for as long as they need, a day or two maybe to breathe, rest, feed, furred, feathered, or human, bearing gifts or empty-handed. Above all, keep only what you can love, truly, abundantly, without regret, and no holding back, although you know they could pick you bone-clean before they leave, shaking the dust from their feet for you to sweep to the high wide sky.

Tales of the Spiderwoman

73

There go his geese again, honking, screeching fit to bring down the rain. They hold their beaks up, craning their necks as they raise their urgent cry, marching across the gravel patch in peerless dignity, their heads held high. Despite his fence, Id grant, these geese guard terrains grander than this gravel patchall we could see with our mere human eyes.

Merlie M. Alunan

74

Dancer
This too familiar territory tight fit of skin over flesh, the bones strict measure, tendon and muscle harnessed to lift, stretch, sway, bend to a designspace, the finity of her body, she makes or unmakes with a gesture. She flutters a hand and history breathesinnocence returns, sin ripens on the tree of knowledge, death comes to be. She leaps, the future gathers at the point of her feetmemory resurrects wefts of our common hope. Within the known ground of her limbs flexing, shoulders straining, breasts thrusting, head upturned to the unseen stars, the world in a second held captive as water sleeps, tamed for the while, in a vessel of fragile clay.

Merlie M. Alunan

94

Oceans may crash in her veins, in her blood unseen rivers roar in flood, but what she knows within her flesh we cannot see: wind lingering over valleys of her need, her hair a thicket of dreams to snag the moon in its tangles, in her womb a well full of shadows. What eternity of sky yearns, empty behind her far gaze? Beneath the tempo of her gait the hidden idioms of her flesh. We sit and watch, testing our truths, tasting our passions in her grace. Her body stays, weighted to its changeless fate.

March 30, 2009

Tales of the Spiderwoman

95