My Mother Greets Kali, 1965
St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Jasper, Indiana
Her retching tongue, emblem of arrested destruction, foot planted stern on Shiva’s back
are not the most disturbing aspects of the statue, on this unmarked postcard delivered
unaddressed; nor her four arms, a blue moonrise, nor her entombment in welling rock:
it is her name—Dark Mother—her blessing hands, blackened face transcendent vortex.
My mother at 24 picks at threads of new-won habit over knees pummeled sore
from scrubbing floors. Every night before the Great Silence begins batwing soft
the other women’s mouths move, their backs straight wires to the sky, hung swallows:
but the sounds unhinge, their teeth verge on bloody in chapel light, the wingsdrumming.
My mother’s eyes go a little whiter, spooked horse. What coriolis force awaits?
She has lived here for seven years. She has swept. She has climbed the stair to her cell,
to sleep upon her iron bed, to bell prayer in the night, and, now, to study Kali’s
skull necklace dance, cupped bone gongs of language, 50 true runes, vibration’s origin.
The chapel’s wood smoothed with a thousand thousand hands clutching hanks of hair
long shaved off, the love of chaos pressed into the grain of pews, walls, smothered.
Namaste, breathes Kali: I salute the light within you. My mother scrutinizes chaos,
decides she cannot befriend it, master its trump, its tides. Fingering a chain, a rope,
a nail, she goes back to her chores, the smell of oranges, her knitted thoughts, spoilt
now by a woman’s bared breast, unveiled Shakti, which makes her shudder,
which makes her forget about it all—the jungle, the sea, the caves, the still sun—
and take up her place again on the floor, where she is subsumed, just as
her own split Mother—missing two arms, covered from head to toe—is relegated
to the side aisle, ever damned to watch her Son writhe in mortal, missionary air.
Elizabeth Barbato was born in New England but somehow ended up in New Jersey, where for fourteen years she has taught writing, drama and music to every age
from kindergarteners to high school seniors. Elizabeth’s work is in
current or forthcoming editions of Apple Valley Review, Poetrybay, Foliate
Oak, The Litchfield Review, Ghoti(fish),The Chimaera, All Things Girl,
Stride, Origami Condom, Word For/Word and Cantaraville