This is the poem I started writing at the workshop with Daljit Nagra at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology and also read there tonight http://www.thresholds.org.uk/museums-collections-poets/museum-of-archaeology-and-anthropology/
At the workshop we were given many objects to explore; I was inspired by a horse skeleton; two intricate horn spoons; South American fabric that had a song coded in it with lines;
In the end it all shifted in an attempt to imagine the history of a woman whose skeleton is exhibited in the Museum; (the same that inspired Sylvia Plath to write her poem All the Dear Ones http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/All_the_Dead_Dears).
I am looking at it through an Eastern-European/ Vlach perspective.
Jhum jhum/apã apã*
a mark behoondred around the flesh of
Philomena's ankle.
The jhum jhum is from her jaw. hoove struck fed in brown horn spoons
that hold her breath:
" apã apã soare soare limbã frigã arpã mãnã firidã dzuã cicior"
The jhum jhum is from her jaw. they took off the toe
rings with herb ointments at the birth.
They, the midwives stitched the bones of Philomena's mother
tipped with milky mousse at the birth
the snow that carves the Arctic caverns
over a baby seal fossil
where white bears had cracked the ice
the head fingered so many times, now behind the glass
her breath stinks.
visitors ask why she screamed
as if the birth pains weren't enough.
They, her sisters packed the front door rag and her body
in the coffin.
Something had gone wrong. Her feet faced the wrong
side
but, they walked through the street smoke that peeled
the banknotes' dye and their make-up.
the stinky moist breath frosts the glass at night
that dries off under glass fingertips during visiting hours
like the Vlach language:
" apã apã soare soare limbã frigã arpã mãnã firidã dzuã cicior"
cold like the coat hangers in Philomena's house
her mother's cupboard, her sisters' and their mother.
and her mother they call out:
" apã apã"
Can someone please give them a glass of water.
*jhum (or chum) is the Bangla word for the sound toe rings make;
apã is the Vlach word for water.
