Orchard Weight
by Helen Bullard and Felice Amato
To become like the pit of a peach —ancient emblematic fossil that holds all locked in a prayer which is a gesture which is now just bone. What of the bruise-able flesh… the sweet that isn’t sweet and the sour that isn’t sour and the juice that runs down our faces and collects World-Dust —especially between our breasts, especially across "the" rib? I tasted the inner seed once. It was like an almond but it bit my tongue and left it stinging.
It stung me, too, at first. Like the first morning-after, like the first morn of autumn, like the cold of the frost in the fields. Like my frost bitten fingers, my paper-cut knuckle, the bee sting tweezed out in the spring. But, what of that Dust? Of the World at our breast, of that hardening coating of time? Of that tip of the rib, that metallic taste, the knowledge of knowledge’s worth? Let the seed fall. Let it be spice. Let it bloom in clouds [of flour]. Let the frost come. Let the hardening happen. Let it be neither. But both.
Clouds of flour brought now to bowl and mixed and shaped. Overkneaded and overknuckled to a tough white torso ... now arms ... and head. Roll long legs between my fingers and the table's disapproving knowledge of the way dough works. The hardening is happening and in a few days I will pit eye tooth against dough and taste the metal of my blood when I can't bite off the head-- I take a leg instead. Gnaw and gnarl and no one could and know one could.
To become [like the kneaded form; the known]. The kneaded needed cruciform, of arms and legs and blood and knowledge, of knowing wood and dust and tillage. Of sun toward creator’s cargo, of touch toward this orchards weight. To create. And breathe, and foist, and harden. To reach, and touch, and wade. To bargain. This sap now slips (sticks) deep to the bone. And now let ice into this flow. And now, step out into the water.
Hand to hand. The weight is foisted-orchard weight. Into my palm and my palm from your palm but with the frost the skin splits sap seeps and sticks and sickens but only slightly. But still. Wade out somewhere and rinse it? To find the icy water hardens it to the skin... in the webbing and the crooks and the weave of the hand there's a whisper of what happened that I can't scrape away.
But scrape, all the same! Scrape the whisper towards the purr; card the fleece! Rub the salted cloth. Scour, from hand to crook, from foot to earth. Scrape the water fresh again! Sever the warp and weft. Scrape and gush, gush and surge, surge and soak. From soak to split to sop, from cloth to cloud, to glittering salt stacks, heating in the saltpans, giving life to cattle high on the hills. The overseers. Saltlicks to stone pits. Quarried, and quarried again. Gathering speed, blowing in swirls, ground back into piles of Dust.
The cattle high on the hills.... Their spines are not for riding.
Their tongues stick to the not-sweet, not-sour. Their ribs poke out in the heat. |
Helen Bullard is a research-based storyteller, and her practice tells stories about animals. She is interested in cultural histories, ecological and industrial relationships between animals. Her media ranges from performance and video, to sculpture, photography, and written forms. She is currently telling the story of the horseshoe crab in a self-designed PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Felice Amato is an artist whose work takes many forms of narrative, including drawing, sung and spoken text, outdoor sculpture installations, and puppetry/object performance. In her self-designed PhD program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she incorporates folklore, gender studies, and creative writing into a multi-disciplinary investigation of the female self.
Felice Amato is an artist whose work takes many forms of narrative, including drawing, sung and spoken text, outdoor sculpture installations, and puppetry/object performance. In her self-designed PhD program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she incorporates folklore, gender studies, and creative writing into a multi-disciplinary investigation of the female self.