(”Half-hanged Mary” was Mary Webster, who was accused of witchcraft in the 1680’s in a Puritan town in Massachusetts and hanged from a tree - where, according to one of the several surviving accounts, she was left all night and the buried in the snow. It is known that when she was cut down she was still alive, since she lived for another fourteen years.)
7pm
Rumour was loose in the airhunting for some neck to land on.I was milking the cow,the barn door open to the sunset.
I didn’t feel the aimed word hitand go in like a soft bullet.I didn’t feel the smashed fleshclosing over it like waterover a thrown stone.
I was hanged for living alonefor having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,tattered skirts, few buttons,a weedy farm in my own name,and a surefire cure for warts;
Oh yes, and breasts,Whenever there’s talk of demonsthese come in handy.
8pm
The rope was an improvisation.With time they’d have thought of axes.
Up I go like a windfall in reverse,a blackend apple stuck back onto the tree.
Trussed hands, rag in my mouth,a flag raised to salute the moon,
old bone-faced goddess, old original,who once took blood in return for food.
The men of the town stalk homeward,excited by their show of hate,
their own evil turned inside out like a glove,and me wearing it.
9pm
The bonnets come to stare,the dark skirts also,the upturned faces in between,mouths closed so tight they’re lipless.I can see down into their eyeholesand nostrils. I can see their fear.
You were my friend, you too.I cured your baby, Mrs.,and flushed yours out of you,Non-wife, to save your life.
Help me down? You don’t dare.I might rub off on you,like soot or gossip. Birdsof a feather burn together,though as a rule ravens are singular.
In a gathering like this onethe safe place is the background,pretending you can’t dance,the safe stance pointing a finger.
I understand. You can’t spareanything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawlagainst the cold,a good word. Lordknows there isn’t muchto go around. You need it all.
10pm
Well God, now that I’m up herewith maybe some time to killaway from the dailyfingerwork, legwork, workat the hen level,we can continue our quarrel,the one about free will.
Is it my choice that I’m danglinglike a turkey’s wattles from hismore then indifferent tree?If Nature is Your alphabet,what letter is this rope?Does my twisting body spell out Grace?I hurt, therefore I am.Faith, Charity, and Hopeare three dead angelsfalling like meteors orburning owls acrossthe profound blank sky of Your face.
12 midnight
My throat is taut against the ropechoking off words and air;I’m reduced to knotted muscle.Blood bulges in my skull,my clenched teeth hold it in;I bite down on despair
Death sits on my shoulder like a crowwaiting for my squeezed beetof a heart to burstso he can eat my eyes
or like a judgemuttering about sluts and punishmentand licking his lips
or like a dark angelinsidious in his glossy featherswhispering to me to be easyon myself. To breathe out finally.Trust me, he says, caressingme. Why suffer?
A temptation, to sink downinto these definitions.To become a martyr in reverse,or food, or trash.
To give up my own words for myself,my own refusals.To give up knowing.To give up pain.To let go.
2am
Out of my mouth is coming, at somedistance from me, a thin gnawing soundwhich you could confuse with prayer except thatpraying is not constrained.
Or is it, Lord?Maybe it’s more like being strangledthan I once though. Maybe it’sa gasp for air, prayer.Did those men at Pentecostwant flames to shoot out of their heads?Did they ask to be tossedon the ground, gabbling like holy poultry,eyeballs bulging?
As mine are, as mine are.There is only one prayer; it is notthe knees in the clean nightgownon the hooked rugI want this, I want that.Oh far beyond.Call it Please. Call it Mercy.Call it Not yet, not yet,as Heaven threatens to explodeinwards in fire and shredded flesh, and the angels caw.
3am
wind seethes in the leaves aroundme the tree exude nightbirds night birds yell insidemy ears like stabbed hearts my heartstutters in my fluttering clothbody I dangle with strengthgoing out of me the wind seethesin my body tatteringthe words I clenchmy fists hold Notalisman or silver disc my lungsflail as if drowning I callon you as witness I didno crime I was born I have borne Ibear I will be born this isa crime I will notacknowledge leaves and windhold onto meI will not give in
6am
Sun comes up, huge and blaring,no longer a simile for God.Wrong address. I’ve been out there.
Time is relative, let me tell youI have lived a millennium.
I would like to say my hair turned whiteovernight, but it didn’t.Instead it was my heart:bleached out like meat in water.
Also, I’m about three inches taller.This is what happens when you drift in spacelistening to the gospelof the red-hot stars.Pinpoints of infinity riddle my brain,a revelation of deafness.
At the end of my ropeI testify to silence.Don’t say I’m not grateful.
Most will have only one death.I will have two.
8am
When they came to harvest my corpse(open your mouth, close your eyes)cut my body from the rope,
surprise, surprise:I was still alive.
Tough luck, folks,I know the law:you can’t execute me twicefor the same thing. How nice.
I fell to the clover, breathed it in,and bared my teeth at themin a filthy grin.You can imagine how that went over.
Now I only need to lookout at them through my sky-blue eyes.They see their own ill willstaring then in the foreheadand turn tail
Before, I was not a witch.But now I am one.
Later
My body of skin waxes and wanesaround my true body,a tender nimbus.I skitter over the paths and fieldsmumbling to myself like crazy,mouth full of juicy adjectivesand purple berries.The townsfolk dive headfirst into the bushesto get out of my way.
My first death orbits my head,an ambiguous nimbus,medallion of my ordeal.No one crosses that circle.
Having been hanged for somethingI never said,I can now say anything I can say.
Holiness gleams on my dirty fingers,I eat flowers and dung,two forms of the same thing, I eat miceand give thanks, blasphemiesgleam and burst in my wakelike lovely bubbles.I speak in tongues,my audience is owls.
My audience is God,because who the hell else could understand me?Who else has been dead twice?
The words boil out of me,coil after coil of sinuous possibility.The cosmos unravels from my mouth,all fullness, all vacancy.
1. What Types of people were vulnerable to these kinds of charges during this period?
a. People who lived alone, with blue eyes, tan skin, unusual remedies, women (breast)
2. Define Trussed:
a. to tie something up tightly
3. How is she similar to a flag being raised?
a. She is hung up in the air for people to see
4. Who are the bonnets? Why are they afraid?
a. Other women, they are afraid of what will happen to themselves and maybe afraid of her
5. What Favors had she done for these women?
a. Cured babies, and helped deliver babies
6. What could happen if they try to help her? What would “rub off”?
a. They may also be hung, Maybe the rumor of being witches
7. What are her feelings toward God right now? How do you know?
a. She is livid, She seems to be mocking what god stands for Grace, Faith, Charity and hope
8. How is death like a crow? A judge? A dark angel?
a. Like a crow waiting for her to suffocate so it can feed, a judge about to convict someone for life, or a dark angel just telling her to let go of life and stop fighting it
9. What is she trying to convince herself to do?
a. Trying to convince herself to left herself die, to stop the pain to just let go, just to stop fighting what seems to be inevitable
10. What two different kinds of prayers is she talking about? What is HER prayer?
a. ***********Her pray is for her not to die, for God to have mercy
11. Why is the wording here so deliberately awkward? What is the poet trying to show us?
a. So that you can sense her dying, she is showing how she is slowly giving into death or maybe how it felt for her to talk, like she had to pause and start again
12. What does she see as her only crime? What is the significance of the repetition of the word “born/borne”?
a. Being born
13. How long has she been hanging?
a. For 11 hours
14. Why is the sun no longer a simile for God?
a. Because before this the sun was something beautiful and delightful but something that stings her eyes and reminds her of how long she has been hanging
15. How might the townsfolk have felt when they found her still alive?
a. Scared, Fearful
16. Why does she say this?
a. Because before she could say there was not abnormal about her, no witch like qualities but now she was hung for half a day and is still alive, she “will die twice”, and also now the towns people are more likely to believe that she is a witch, and she probably is a little crazy like witch as in mean or hateful
17. How do the townsfolk feel about her now? Why?
a. They are afraid of her, because if you hang someone you believe to be a witch (or anyone) and they survive you would think they will also get revenge. Also, id you hang someone who “might” be a witch and they survive that would seem to be full proof that they are.
18. How have things changed since her hanging? How has she changed? What is her mental state?
a. She has a different outlook, she eats flowers and feces, and mice, and she speaks in tongues to owls and God. She seems to have gone insane
