Read my latest story, "A Tale of Two Birthdays", at 52|250.

Last night, I went to see an incredible film: La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow). It follows the story of Fausta, a young woman whose mother was raped while pregnant during Peru’s internal conflict, referred to throughout the movie simply as “the terrorism”. Fausta’s family believes that she suffers from the disease that gives the film its name, a sort of fear and loss of soul passed down through her mother’s milk. The symbolism may seem obvious, but the movie never lets the audience think of it merely as a sign for the way trauma is passed between generations: it is treated throughout as a physical illness. When the women are preparing Fausta’s mother’s body for the grave, only Fausta may touch her mother’s breasts as the other women are afraid of being infected. A young man tries to discourage his friend from hitting on Fausta by saying she has the “tit disease”.

The potato is another example of symbolism that the film insistently makes physical. Having heard a story of a woman in her village who, during the terrorism, put a potato in her vagina to avoid being raped, Fausta does likewise and refuses to have it taken out, even when it leads her to pass out. What would have been a survival mechanism in another time is now killing her. The past is killing her from within, even as she tries to cut off its shoots.

Most of us who have had traumatic experiences know how that works.

In Fausta’s case, events come to a crisis after a cruel act of appropriation leaves her uncertain whether she will be able to bring her mother back to their village for burial. The ending is no fairy tale tie-up, but it is certainly hopeful.

Real hope after all looks directly at reality, with all the horror that entails, and goes on living anyway.

The Lovely Survivor on the Flying Trapeze

we are cats   ghosts   devils
everything you can't see
until it's too late
                    spotlight names
colors of our bodies
impossible flesh
                  impossible cloth
twisted & woven from oil
         boiled in flasks & plexiglass

         but those are darkness thoughts
——when my shadow's thrown against the tent
  there's no space for anything but how to place my hands
  to turn   to breathe   to grasp   to bend

  swoop
        gravity  how my heart responds
        can only be a memory
        if I'm to live
for you            perform

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The Desert of Low Tide

nothing left to worship     altar broke its leg
became an ordinary chair no ordinary baby
could sit on without falling
                              o siege perilous!
the baby wasn't born
                     was never God to her
    was never a baby
                      was cells   was gone
                        she walked across the sand

to which he gave his knees & jeans
and called the sunset desolate
                               except the sun was rising

                            he demand
-ed praise
             for letting her decide

                                       he couldn't turn his head
or see beyond his heather gray hood

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written in response to read write prompt 111: broken chair

grape vine walls w/bricked out breaks
hide behind red door
where art isn’t supposed to figure

more than a shape, a number, a dollar

my body feeds these grapes
& sucks them into wine

no savior here

but flashes
—body miming mind

 

 

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As part of Blogathon 2009, I have posted a poem every half hour for twenty four hours. Please sign up to sponsor me or donate directly to Friends International. Everyone who sponsors me will receive a copy of the revised poems as a chapbook if they email their snail mail address to ekswitaj[at]gmail[dot]com.

 

 

And now, I’m off to sleep.