(I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
to you they have showed some truth. Macbeth, 2.1.20-21) In Hindi they were called Rudaali, lower caste women paid to lament the dead. They followed shrouded corpses through the dawn streets beyond city walls, standing by furrowed red soil, wailing and scattering the crows. In Ireland they were keeners; for a coin with a bronze moon they wept beside the sheeted dead from early dark through the interminable Gaelic night. It is a primeval thing, believing that women hold what is sacred and know the ways of loss, but there are those who learned to mourn at the feet of Death. Better to pay for them and their magic, to venerate with one hand and take away with the other. Every coin is a reduction-- But Weird Sisters follow the one who pays. The dust from his shoes falls down an hourglass, his food is borrowed. He will be followed to the grave by the Rudaali; behind them will come three black nuns. Beneath the earth his eyes will be opened; every penny he paid for grief will lie acrid on his tongue. Shades of his sisters unmourned will stand over him like crows, wailing to call out the jackals.
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Kristin RoedellKristin Roedell is a retired attorney and Northwest poet. Her work has appeared in over 60 journals and anthologies, including Switched on Gutenberg, Damselflypress, Crab Creek Review, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. She is the author of Girls with Gardenias, (Flutter Press), and Downriver (Aldrich Press). She has been nominated for both Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. She was the 2013 winner of NISA’s 11th Annual Brainstorm Poetry Contest and a finalist in the 2013 Crab Creek Review poetry contest. Down River was a finalist in the Quercus Review Press poetry prize. She lives in Lakewood Washington with her husband and two daughters. |