TALESOF THE

SPIDERWOMAN

Tales of the Spiderwoman17

.

Woman of many wordsShe loved him with words, torrential. She threw the words down from skyscrapers, cathedral spires, belfries of country churches,thatched eaves of peasant homes. The wordstumbled and clattered and zoomed and slitheredand flew over tin roofs, tops of trees, umbrellas,they tickled the ears of children and dogsand elephants in the zoo, and made them danceand wriggle and prance, they rained downon rivers and ponds and oceans, rodeon the backs of turtles and seals, and the whaleheard them and echoed them in arctic waterscold and deep, and some words fell on the sandfor snails to nibble and crabs to drag to their lairs.

Her words would not stop coming, so nowhis ears were full of them, clogging his nose,cramming his pockets, his shirts balloonedwith them, they squished in his shoes, they litteredhis 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 chatteringas 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

28Merlie M. Alunan

Tale of the Spiderwoman

Pyres of leaves burn away summer.Cicada shells pile under the marsh grass,still memorial of seasons past.I’ve no words for these—lean boys and slender girls pass by my windowdrinking 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 stranger’s 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 untilalmost invisible. Fuzz on my skin, my eyesmultiply a hundredfold in this darkness and split the light in thousand prisms—and now I can see what’s before and after. I become light as air, my sweetness distils to fatal potency. I practice a patience vaster than ten worlds. I wait.

Tales of the Spiderwoman29

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 I’d 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 Spiderwoman37

To teach a heartFor 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

—Thishearthasalwayschosen itsownpace,won’tslowforanyone’ssake, notevenitsown.Makesitsownrules asheartshavedonetheseagesnow, maybetillalltime.Quitebeyondreason, thisheartlistenstonoone, noteventome,deaftoeveryonebutitself—

but she says nothing, closes her eyes, watching behind her lids violet suns fold in, unfold, swirl, burst upon a worldknown only to herself—caves of her fear,ridges of her sorrow, thickets of ragewhere sharp-clawed leopards prowlin great hunger. Tissue and blood, bone and flesh—fragile remnants of her ebbing days—why her heart now flails wild like fish caught in a drought, thrashing in the mudflats of her memories.

38Merlie M. Alunan

His fingers count landmarks among her ribs, down her spine. More needles. “For heart’s ease,” he declares. Now she’s a secret he reads too easily with his salient eyes.She sighs. Bless the live air streamingin 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 all’s said and done, who can tame a heart wild in its cage of mortality? Still she lies, rehearsing faithin his deft device. Who can teach a heart what the heart desires?

72Merlie M. Alunan

The neighbor’s geeseHe keeps them fenced in, together withthe fattening pig, a few chickenshe’s raising for the pot, some lanka trees—his flock of five white geese.He’d kept a dog there once, a lonelyhungry 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 now—to their fates,I guess. But there are still the geese.

He keeps the geese, he says, to guardhis few trees, the pig, the chickens scrabbling in the grass, the thumb-sizedpatch of gravel he had claimed under God’s heaven as his.If geese had business of their ownother than this, he’d never think of asking.

Tales of the Spiderwoman73

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 toadhops around toad fashion to his water trough.The geese announce intrusion in raucous gabblewithout any distinction. Or perhaps it’s just goose talk, “Bad food here, mate,” and the restsquawk back, “You bet, not enough hereto make crap!” Goose laughter, loud, loud.If geese were like us, they’d be more polite.

What I always say iskeep only what comes to your doorfreely and in peace. I’d say it to him,but he’s too full of his own wisdom—I doubt he’ll hear me out. I’d 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 knowthey could pick you bone-clean before they leave, shaking the dust from their feet for you to sweep to the high wide sky.

74Merlie M. Alunan

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, I’d grant,these geese guard terrains granderthan this gravel patch—all we could see with our mere human eyes.

94Merlie M. Alunan

DancerThis too familiar territory—tight fit of skin over flesh,the bones’ strict measure,tendon and muscle harnessedto lift, stretch, sway, bendto a design—space, the finityof her body, she makes or unmakes with a gesture.

She flutters a hand and historybreathes—innocence returns,sin ripens on the tree of knowledge,death comes to be. She leaps, the future gathers at the point of her feet—memory 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.

Tales of the Spiderwoman95

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 moonin 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