allegro for shooing of the police
adagio for washing the body
scherzo for soft laughter and tears
rondo for covering the body with good earth
Antigone, dead siblings
are set.
As for the living –––
pick me for a sister.
I, too, love a proper funeral.
Drag, Dig and Sisters’ Pop-Up Burial.
Landlady,
I make the rounds of graves
keeping up
my family’s
top-notch properties.
On a torture instrument
called an accordion
I stretch my bones
into fingers of a witch.
My guts have been emptied
like bellows
for the best sound.
Once we settle your brother,
I’ll show your forests
of the unburied dead.
We’ll clean the way only two sisters
can clean a house:
no bones scattered like dirty socks,
no ashes at the bottom of kneecaps.
Why bicker with husbands about dishes
when we’ve got
mountains of skulls to shine?
Labour and retribution we’ll share, not girlie secrets.
Brought up by dolls and monuments,
I have the bearings
of a horse and bitch,
I’m cement in tears.
You can spot my graves from afar,
marble like newborn skin.
Here, history comes to an end
like a movie
with rolling credits of headstones,
with nameless credits of mass graves.
Every ditch, every hill is suspect.
Pick me for a sister, Antigone.
In this suspicious land
I have a bright shovel of a face.
– Valzhyna Mort
Matilda Dancing 