cut (Ft. Dauphin photos)
April 12, 2004

Cut my finger yesterday, chopping onions for taco night, and it's too hard to type with bandaged finger. So, just photos today, and a poem.

Cut

What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

-Sylvia Plath

See pictures from my trip to Ft. Dauphin, Madagascar.

See pictures from a boat trip and a hike near Ft. Dauphin.


Comments

It's like she wrote the poem --what, 40-odd years ago?-- just for you!

The rice salvaging endeavor made me smile, although I have to wonder, submerged all that time, was the rice ready to eat or did they have to cook it?

Posted by: janet at April 13, 2004 02:00 PM