This is a quick reading I did of a previously unpublished poem, set to silent film footage.
Written, performed, and produced by Mack W. Mani
Video: Alice in Wonderland (1903) courtesy of Archive.org
The title is taken from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The phrase “black chests and high back chairs” was lifted from the poem The Prophet’s Paradise by Robert W. Chambers
Special Thanks:
Jordan Seider & Elizabeth Laws
When I saw you creeping in the grass,
I knew at once, with just a glance
exactly what you were and were doing.
Painted red and sitting there
barefoot child, without a care,
yes-oh-yes, I know that you need something…
For I have come from a far off land
and I have brought my merry band,
of men who haven’t seen a girl since last Sunday!
But if you find my lot too lively,
we can sit and talk of ivory
and where your city sleeps inside the jungle.
Yes, take us to your far out tribe,
show us where your people hide,
it’s oh-so-far past the time of our meeting!
And the wild creatures you have here,
strike my men as passing queer,
full of meat, that tastes just like our salvation!
We will dance and pray to heaven
that your souls can be forgiven
of all the sins you didn’t know you were committing.
And if your streets are paved with gold,
we will not make the journey home,
we shall stay and make this place our New Eden.
Yes-oh-yes, with blood and sweat,
we will make this our New Eden!
They call the desert
where Ozymandias lay,
the sea of sand,
lost beneath its waves.
Elsewhere he remains,
immortalized in pen
by the poet Shelley
and the endeavors of men;
but not in that place,
where he is pitted
again and again,
against all his barbarity.
His only ally,
what gods and which words
he can salvage from
the tide and this earth.
*
A fairy piece
is a variant or
combination on
the established chess tokens,
such as the Princess,
the Sargent,
and the Knightmare.
They are used only
in unorthodox chess,
where you might try
to force your opponent
into checkmating you
and in programming,
where a computer might
know over a thousand
unique pieces.
*
In 2012,
five hundred new
fairy tales were unearthed
in Regensberg, Germany
originally collected in the 1800s
by Franz Schönwerth.
He was highly respected
by The Brothers Grimm.
But while they weaved
romance into their stories,
Franz remained a historian,
his tales giving us a rare look
into the lives and times
of those who told
these stories first
*
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed
the Cottingly fairies existed
and attended seances
held in a magician’s parlor,
he was even friends with
Houdini, for a time.
Arthur was convinced Harry
truly had some mystic power
and the illusionist was
never able to convince him
it was all just a trick.
*
Bridget Cleary fell ill
in the spring of 1895
and after several
worsening days
a priest was sent for.
Her husband was blinded
by grief and refused to believe
this woman was actually his wife,
and convinced himself that
she had been replaced
by a changeling.
With nine witnesses present,
her father and husband
poured urine onto her skin and
forced her, pleading
into a roaring fireplace.
They hid her body in a ditch
and went home to hold vigil,
so that the real Bridget
might come home.
To this day, in Ireland
you can hear
schoolgirls singing:
Are you a witch,
are you a fairy,
or are you the wife of
Michael Cleary?
*
Up until the 1990s,
they let the peacocks
roam the grounds here,
temperamental as they were,
they would follow you
around the courtyard
and through the gardens.
The birds would
come and go
as they pleased,
flying between
the estate and
the nearby woods,
densely forested
though they were.
In the summer,
you could hear
them out there
most nights,
boys calling out
to the hens,
translating all that
vibrant color into noise.
I didn’t know for sure
until last Christmas Eve,
when earth and sky
shared the eerie twilight blues
and all the people seemed to glow
with rosy cheeks in
soft bright sweaters.
I was wearing
that tired black dress,
looking down at my children
and up to their father,
dressed up for the kids
as reward for being good.
They cheered
when they saw him,
Santa! Santa! Santa!
But maybe he is
too good of an actor
or not good enough,
because when I saw him
in that red costume
and white beard,
I realized what I was missing.
That night he was
a different man,
or at least
different enough
from the one I knew.
Here was a happy guy
the giving type
always kind
not afraid of a few drinks.
He was everything
my husband wasn’t.
And that was when I knew.
I caught a fox inside my
house one morning,
his winter fur a flash
as he was running
down the wooden floors
and steps and past
the sleeping children,
’til he led me to a room
that I had long forgotten.
Under blankets,
wrapped in covers
where I laughed
with my brother
’til a knock came
from the back porch
like the second coming,
so the fox ran to the door
and he laughed as he answered.
And then we were both outside
in the cold, cold forest
the endless paths of winter
stretching out before us
and the fox is running free
on the ground and it’s snowing
and it don’t show signs of stopping
not until the morning
and I think that we can
make it if we just keep walking.
Yes, I know that we can make it
if we just keep walking.
I don’t remember the wild,
but my mother does.
She won’t talk about
what happened to her herd,
but her left eye,
sightless and milky white
speaks of a cruel world
beyond these walls.
Home to her now means
not having to wander,
to destroy all the time,
or worry about her children
and she says,
that is worth the space.
Though recently,
she does mutter in her sleep,
about the graveyards of Asia…
They are calling out to her,
across oceans
and across instinct,
begging her
to finally come home.
That tiger still
dreams of the jungle,
that never sleeping ocean,
growing warm and wet
in riots of green and brown.
She wanders that place
most nights,
if only in her dreams.
She belongs now
to a different world,
a smaller one
a safer one
full of smiling faces,
not to be hunted.
We sank beneath the pepper trees,
full of lust and dustbowl sadness
he’s just a boy from town,
could have been anybody
with swagger and words.
He touches my scars
but can’t look me in the eyes
and when each breath
is shorter than the last
he whispers,
What if we get caught?
So I go faster,
past it all
and he forgets to speak,
his eyes making
lazy turns in the sky.
When we’re done
he tells me of his life,
so I nod at his words
and shake at his god,
so unlike my own,
all savage and undone.
When he tells me he loves me,
I just hold him close.
It’s dark when we close our eyes,
his marks still fresh on my body
but by morning he is gone,
off onto the freeway
and on into obscurity.
His marks are gone too,
but not his god and not the night
they follow me close all the way home,
back to the reeds and shallows
on the black water,
where the sumac grows wild.
Mack W. Mani 