Blood Memory. By V. Penelope Pelizzon

Hunched in the bath, four ibuprofen gulped

         too late to dull the muscle cramping

                  to sate a god who thirsts

         monthly for his slake of iron,

I am just a body bleeding in bad light.

But after an hour, as the wrenching wanes,

I run more water in, remembering

         when I was a girl my mother knew

                           one cure for this pain

                           and, while I cried,

         carried me mugs of tea and whiskey

                  clouded with sugar cubes.

In a palm of pinkish water, I scoop up

         a burl of my flesh, almond-sized.

                  The tissues settle, livid

red to nearly black as I tilt my hand

                  against the light to see it

glistening like a ruby cabochon,

                  appealing as it appalls,

            recalling one future, years ago,

            that would have borne itself on my blood

                           had I allowed.  

                  The question swims into view:

would I harbor another life now?

Last spring, I sat above the harbor in Naples

                  with three friends whose children,

         after a week’s vacation, were all

safely back at school. Palpable,

                           the holiday mood

         a morning freed from offspring brought!

(I’d felt a guilty pleasure I’d go home

         not to cook someone’s lunch,

                           but to read.)

Still, it wasn’t long before our talk’s

         compass needle trembled north

                  toward the motherland:

soccer games in the Flegrean fields,

                           ancient sun

            reborn and swaddled putto-pink

            in mist above the fumaroles;

                           rococo

                  messes of gelato;

first words, whose honeyed gravity

                           weighed on me

                           like a toddler’s head

         snugged below my chin in sleep.

                  Then, Serena described

         troubles at her daughter’s school.

Their new principal refused to pay

         the local gang’s protection money.

                           And so, the teachers

         arrived at work one day to find

         the hutches where the children kept

rabbits and a little clutch of chicks

                           overturned.

                  From the playground swings

                  the throat-cut animals hung.  

         Next time we come for you

someone had written across the door in blood.

                  Now the parents wanted

                  the principal to pay:

            that was how these things were done.  

                           Screw her ideals,

                           Serena heard.

That bitch is going to get our children killed.

         A blade bossed with oyster floats,

the harbor glinted below Serena’s voice.  

         Into that water, Apicius wrote,

                  the Romans tossed slaves

         to glut the eels they’d later eat

with tits and vulvae, succulently cooked,

                  of sows who’d aborted their litters.

                           And from that water,

                  fishermen pulled a girl

                           who’d been under

                           at least a week.

         She may have been the missing one

         the papers were reporting on  

                           whose photo showed her

         lippy, grinning, seventeen.

                           A week in that wake.

She was scoured of identity.

                  Water’s thick in Naples

                           as martyr’s blood

         rusting in ampoules in the cathedral,

where it liquefies on schedule

                           —and it does;

                  I’ve seen the miracle—

                           to show the city’s

            still protected by the saint.   

         I can’t remember, six months later,

         loggy in my cooling bath,

if some net had hauled these images

         writhing up at me that morning

                           as we sat together

                           near the harbor,

         or if they’d tangled in my thoughts

that same evening after Serena’s dinner  

                  honoring Women’s Day.  

                           Across Europe,

lapels flickered yellow wicks of mimosa,

                           marking the feast.  

                           And in Naples,

                  flowers fumed for women

burned on the flank of Mt. Vesuvius

                  where they’d been sewing

         sweatshop zippers on fake designer bags.

         But as it did with everything,

the city managed to transubstantiate

         horror into carnival.

                  With Theresa and Ellie

         I’d walked home late along the harbor.

Fireworks seethed above the bobbing masts.

         Mirroring those harrier stars

         the water seemed to flame, while

                           drowned in lights

         the Lungomare phosphoresced.

                  Scooters rippled through

                           the reefs of cars,

         barely slowing for schools of boys

                            and women in flocks,

                  stiletto-heeled, who stalked

         screeching over the cobblestones.

                        From an alley’s mouth

                        a gobbet of men disgorged.  

One, drunker than the others, loomed

         over and bent his face to mine.

                  Where are your babies? he hissed,

                  spit pricking my skin.

                           Get home to your babies.  

         Not just drunk but whetted, his glare

         stropped beyond seeing and testing its edge.

                           You’re over-the-hill

                  for trolling—is that what he meant?

         Or was he putting all women away,

                           including the vampire-

                           lipsticked teens?

Whatever he meant, he meant to make us bleed.  

         I wince, drain chill water out,

                  drizzle in a little

                           more of the hot,

         and wonder at this habit

of holding others’ words as worry stones

         to fidget absentmindedly

                           when thought goes slack.   

         Agates of fury, quartzes of scorn.

                  Cold in my ear’s palm,

the hematite heaviness of a final no.

         And I still turn over my mother’s words,

                                    costly pearls,

                  handed me years ago

in a college project on oral history.  

         She took my assignment seriously,

         agreeing to an interview

                  as if it would allow

                  her, too, to wash

through the wrack of half-forgotten truths.  

         Painstakingly on tape

                  she recorded her life,

         lapped by sluices and hesitations.  

Her years in the Women’s Army Corps,

         screening films on safety and hygiene

                  to bored enlisted men.

                           Her depression.

Decades as a secretary. Marriage.  

         Until, near side B’s close, there gathered

                  a final, muscled wave:

         how, when she was well past forty,

                           her bleeding stopped.  

         At first, she thought it was her age.

                  Then—slowly, sickly—

                           she understood.

                           She’d tried to find

         a doctor who would help her, but

                           (her voice cresting, breaking)

five months along, it was too late,

         even if she’d had the money.  

The tape’s hiss like receding surf.   

                  So here I am, at daybreak,

                  adjusting the taps with my toes.

         I think we are shelled animals,

hauled at by tides, sleeking invasive grit

                  with our nacre. I think of her

hiding in the tub for half an hour

                  to read; think how pleased

         I was, finding her, to pull her

                           back to me.

Little plumes of my flesh rock in the swells,

                  but my body is bland now,

                           yielding as kelp,

            and with my toes I pull the plug.   

Drained, I need a couple hours of sleep,

         then I’ll start the day again.

                  And maybe, if I’m sleeping late,

                           the dream will come,

                  one that intrigues me almost

         more than it disturbs, in which

                           I’m falling, bound,

into a bay of blood-threshed water.


Courtesy: www.poetryfoundation.org