Ragtime in the Day of Witches
Rent from DeepDyve- Ragtime in the Day of Witches
The window pitched red and rusted. The greenleaves stripped pitched the bare branchedbrush against the widow’s cheek. The sway ofthe wind blows the belly. She turns backwardnight whispers the epithets hands pressedagainst her skirt. Light filters through the blindplaces. I’m getting my bones back shewhispers. Skulls tossed in the hands of blackchildren wooden branches for a bat insidethe houses tethered to the edge. Washbloodstained panties, arthritic fingers twistingthe flimsy torn satin. Negligees trail on thefloor, cigarette ashes die in her mouth. A onceripe peach smashed under some man’s boot
Red dust trickles through. Red hair red eyebrows skin pinky around the eye brows shelooked like a wild tangerine. June had onlybegun longest summer of my life I don’tremember crawfish, I don’t rememberswimming bellies don’t remember magpies,I don’t remember pigs feet stored in a mason jarmixed with vinegar and sugar red hot skillet andbananas sliced and fired New Orleans style itsmells like dead flies cat’s piss and junk woodcrossed her legs twig sticks at the ankles shetook the wooden clothes pin and pinched hernostrils shut wooden teeth kept in a jelly jar [End Page 181]
When you saw her you saw bones bones ofcheeks bones bones of chin bones of bone offorehead, when she tried to talk voice was awhisper of a whisper mice had greaterarticulation whenever she came close the hairswould rise on my neck her yellowed woodenteeth dulled the blue sky clouds made a cookiecutter of her. Sat on tree stumps of knees amoist paper bag raised to her lips, asking herselfquestions that sounded like statements with aquestion mark stuck at the end and thenanswering them
A gigantic moon rising behind Abigail Horner’s.She call out—don’t get feet stuck in a row ofcollards they’ll wake the dead. sheep curledtheir tails, pork bones and chicken neckssimmering on the back stove I thoughtabout you in the deep green grass with yourstraw hat and knee britches dirt softeningbetween your toes the world never right bymoon mouth moving against lime silkmoths splaying against the screen but tonight do not see you for it is my turntake the jar of soursop to her house
Good evening child, have you come to wait with me—Um, yes ma’am, what you are waiting forWaiting——to dieShe sings it like a rhyme [End Page 182]
Kathy Z. Price is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, and Cave Canem. Her poetry is included or appearing soon Tri-Quarterly, the Rumpus, Bayou, Pleiades, Cincinnati Review, and the anthology Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poet’s Café (Henry Holt), among others. Price is also the author of the forthcoming Mardi Gras Almost Didn’t Come This Year (Simon & Schuster) and The Bourbon Street Musicians (Houghton Mifflin).
