Saudade - Traci Brimhall

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DE LOURDES

      The night is ripping its dress to bind soldiers’ wounds. It’s painting the church with the blood on the torturer’s floor.

      MARIA HELENA

      It’s nailing together the gallows.

      MARIA THEREZA

      It’s combing men’s hair with its fingers, singing, o nenê dorme no

      chão, and measuring their necks.

      Beg, Borrow, Steal

      They fingerprint the severed left hand

      at the police station and all the officers

      start carrying prostheses in their pockets

      in case they discover my daughter alive

      but handless. Everyone makes a spare —

      the carpenter whittles one, the dressmaker

      stitches one, the coroner pickles one

      and experiments with electricity and leeches.

      All of us plant offerings to lure her home —

      tattered bassinet, puppet theater in a mannequin’s

      hollowed chest, a suit of armor posed midstride

      as though some uncanny conquistador resurrected

      himself and continued his search for El Dorado.

      I plaster walls with pictureless posters — MISSING:

       my reason for living. Last seen: pink as life and wailing.

      Tourists return from their searches shouting

      premeditated epiphanies, claiming they found proof

      of life and the postscript of a ransom note requesting

      old opera records, or else. My tongue inside the licked

      envelope, detective and clue. I barter for what

      remains of her, ignore the warning in the first half

      of the ransom — All action leads to suffering. So does all hope.

      At dawn I find not my daughter, not her other hand,

      but a word as light as terror parting the trees.

      Seven Guesses

      My daughter is dead or being raised by a jamboree of jaguars

      with her dress pulled over her head, pretending to be the ghost

      of a blind king, or my husband will bring her body back from

      where he hid it and parade her on the back of a white-eyed mule,

      or she turned into a dolphin like her father and followed him

      to the Orinoco where his bedtime stories feature laundry, jacaranda

      blossoms, and a lovely hunchback with seven fetishes — collars, corsets,

      cuffs, scratches, spankings, strap-ons, and dolls in leather shoes —

      or my daughter is the tree-shaped tumor in my skull, or the echo

      of a lullaby, all lonesome song and no body, or she’s a character

      in the book authored by my inner voice, the one where my mother

      is limping but alive, and my father escapes from prison,

      and we eat guaraná grown from the left eye of the boy

      whose grave opened to greet his weeping mother and a forest

      rushed out, a child’s eye ripening in the mouth of every bird.

      A Camera Crew Films a Telenovela Based on the Miracles at Puraquequara

      I rehearse my lines as I palm a maracujá to test its tenderness

      and say, Não, Comandante, and, More rum, cadela. Day in, day out,

      I eat the same fried bread and ripe plantains, wash the same sheets,

      keep saving the saved, the baptized rising from the river,

      awed and dripping, living their scripts. Though my memory

      of the execution differs I stand on my mark and clap.

      I try to recall my insincere lamentations in the funeral parade.

      An extra in my own story and envious of the ingenue’s unmuddied

      shoes and air-conditioned hotel room, I say, Ajudar, ajudar,

      and cry on cue. Between scenes an actor shares imported cigars

      with the prostitute playing me. When cameras roll, he bites

      her nipples with his prosthetic teeth, and my milk lets down.

      Sweet white ache. After the mayor hangs himself and bequeaths

      his second-best bed to his horse, I write romantic obituaries

      and send his wife signed photographs of myself. I make love

      to avoid sweeping the sidewalk, to practice geometry, to satisfy

      the voyeur and come with uncertain pleasure. Only when the film crew

      leaves do the dead reappear, drinking, dancing, whipping each other

      with TV antennas. They burn with more heat than light.

      Pictures from that night reveal a black horse dragging a priest

      through paradise, the crowd weeping, at last, with happiness.

      In Which the Chorus Explains What Was Stolen in 1966

      MARIA DE LOURDES

      One candidate swore he’d import artists from Paris to paint every voter’s portrait.

      MARIA HELENA

      But the wiretap revealed that of the six masked balls and two bullfights he promised, he only planned to pass out free twelve-packs of Guaraná Antarctica on election day.

      MARIA APARECIDA

      One candidate skipped town when someone caught him digging up a body and reburying it beneath the courthouse.

      MARIA THEREZA

      Another rumor said he was caught tattooing women after curfew, inking diabolical love letters onto their ankles.

      MARIA MADALENA

      He was part of a conspiracy of windmills, others claimed.

      MARIA DE LOURDES

      They said his chickens accused him of unspeakable things.

      MARIA HELENA

      When we arrived to cast our ballots, the soldiers at the polls handed us a picture of the general leading the charge against the Bolivian army and a picture of the president’s house stormed by sailors.

      MARIA APARECIDA

      We all voted for the general twice, the dim X of our voice. We went to the town square, and danced with short men with long mustaches who buried their bristled cheeks in our chests and swore to help you when the borders open if we’d only let them sign their names on our thighs.

      MARIA THEREZA

      We tried to tell

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