Читать книгу Monica's Overcoat of Flesh - Geraldine Clarkson - Страница 13

i.

So Mother Abbess delays a few days in the selva,

adventures alongside the laity

in toucan-touched rainforests, tickled

by tigerlight striping her habit. She turns frissonista

at the thought of real terrorists laired up with jaguars

and monkeys; brushes breasts against copaiba,

pretty malva, thick-set cedar. Steers the tour-guide

past poisonous pencil snakes, then strikes out

for her own territory, the desert, and the slick

monastic show she runs on the skirts

of a shanty-town, at the edge

of a tip, rubbing shoulders with rubbish.

Presents her travelling companion—

ii.

the father. Clicked into guest-quarters,

he’s corn-fed and watered by pale nuns who

come and go with purple chicha, iced lemon,

and a yard broom to keep the steps clear

of sand; their eyes dart low, bright blue. He thirsts

for his arum lily, his daughter

transplanted, imagines her

growing twisted, amongst similar.

He asks questions, raises eyebrows

in Spanish, flicks copper roaches

from pillows. Ticks off gold mornings

throbbing with scarlet-tongued flowers. Activities

are arranged: the beach; Museum of the Sea. He glimpses her

three times a day through the grille.

iii.

The daughter, inside the enclosure, dreams

of peacocks and snow. Rises earlier, collides

with a junta of nuns who, as if playing chess, devise

urgent sweeping, singing, and scaling of fish;

keep her busy. No visits. His ticket expires.

Ceremonial farewells: they hug;

she smuggles a shell to her mother

(give nothing unless the Abbess allow);

then watches planes, which might be his,

arc the desert—the selva of paired birds,

painted rainforests, terrorists—the mountains—away—

Soon after, she breaches the cloister-wall; arcs the desert-and-selva-

and-mountains herself; returns to her father, November, fireworks like

gunshots, brief birds climbing the night, and the original wall

made of muscle and will.