Knots In A
Blanket
 |
| 2 Wives, “Is this a mess or what?” |
(In the jungle the Two
Wives hold up one of El Sultam’s carpets)
TWO WIVES looking closely
at the carpet,
Interesting - a woven weap,
or web pattern,
in diamond shapes
crisscrossing a bit jaggedly
over themselves at
inter-points
where confluent channels
of gleaming thread
seem to charge up together
and bundle...
Perhaps, taking us to our
destination
from where the pre-fixed
coordinates
woven (by the Witchdoctor’s
women)
into the blanket
seem to be?
At the knots on the
cross-stitching.
Does this make sense?
I’m not sure how to tell it?
Yes. The interstices are
joining there;
and, from the Witchdoctor’s
special
jungle goop threads, drawing
in power
in red, yellow and green
that runs through them and
hides -
like the birds at the tops
of the trees.
And, once the knots are
woven-mattered and really
connected,
the light, light colored
plumage
grows and lifts upon us!
And we can go!
So, then, all is light,
like rainbow thread,
and wavery -
thus, able to sustain
long-distance driving
over long oceans, hot
mountains,
lower down dust bowls,
gravelly mesas and so on.
Back home.
Yes, back to the home that
we have
yearned for so much.
Back to our two men.
Yes, the husbands who we
have remembered
well enough and yearned for,
too.
NARRATOR determining the
outcome of the new scenario,
Then, confluential
happenings cross-happened
and all broke loose,
just staying apart again,
for the two couples
separated...
 |
| 2 Wives on their carpets sail in front of their 2 husbands down below |
ONLOOKER
Does this have to happen?
Crossing, crisscrossing,
passing by, missing,
going in opposite
directions?
(He feels genuinely
touched by their predicament)
Day of pretty clouds.
Day of passing.
 |
| Approaching each other |
Each group of two has vanished
in its place.
NARRATOR
Their goals are different;
they are not, the two, to
meet.
The Husbands have to go
somewhere new.
The Wives back to their own
starting place.
They pass by each other in
the free air.
They don’t wave.
ONLOOKER
Why not? Because they can’t
see each other?
Or, do they feel something
go by
that’s strange?
NARRATOR
Enough speculation!
The Witchdoctor hasn’t got
any of them
off the ground yet!
The
Witchdoctor’s Magic Toil Cloth
 |
| Witchdoctor’s magic toil cloth |
NARRATOR again, wondering how the Wives can escape
from the jungle village,
How do they dis-substantiate
and fly -
corporally disengage?
The Witchdoctor told them
that they could
become birds.
And are they flapping and
flying?
No. They’re not.
So far, they are still on
the ground
with the Witchdoctor’s old
‘toil-cloth’:
something uncanny
to get them to go somewhere
else.
ONLOOKER
Another carpet?
NARRATOR
Yes, it’s staring there,
almost alive,
with its nodes and eyes
looking up from the table,
where it’s bunched down,
smoothed out,
unrolled, laid flat.
TWO WIVES, looking at the
toil-cloth carpet,
On this new skin
is a whole lot of
possibility.
Yes. In the written designs
and patterns
upon it.
And for the two people
placed upon it, too!
Over the top of it.
(They both stand on the
carpet)
But we hardly fit.
Yeah, we’re jammed together.
Is there something shaking?
That’s me. I can’t get
steady.
Are we going to go?
I don’t know?
Do you remember the
Witchdoctor’s uncanny words?
his lamenting incantations
over the greasy thing?
his wishes full, when he
wanted to take us
to his paradisiacal cell?
(They both shake their
heads in amusement)
He looks fearsome and
ferocious
but it’s all a sham.
Worked up around make-up,
feathers and a hat.
A tam.
His cheeks daubed with black
and his eye-liner
red-orange;
black like a toucan
and his face whitened out.
A whitened-out sponge.
He gets puffy
and then turns thin.
There’s no way that we know
what to expect of him.
But he must have a lair,
away from the Chieftain’s
rules,
where he plans his poison
ventures
and hordes his local jewels.
His rules are on the
oil-cloth
written up in hexagrams,
triangularily solid,
deliberate, forthright;
embroidered with turtle’s
bones
and shells of clams.
It’s clanking, jingling a
little,
carried around.
Hear him coming.
It’s hanging down:
a large, flat piece of skin
that he’s holding in his
hands.
We girls will get it from
him.
(End of Chapter 32)
