WEBVTT

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This is a story
that my father used

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to tell me when I was a kid.

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My father was a part of
a group of storytellers.

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And I don't know if
you have them here,

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but where you
would get together,

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and there was no written word.

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And you sit, and
you repeat stories

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that might be lost that
are in the oral tradition.

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And they are-- in every
culture, it was a lot--

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many of them were
Native American culture,

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but it was in--

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we were in-- this particular
meeting was in San Francisco,

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and so it was everyone
from everywhere.

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And this was one of the
stories that he would tell.

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"Cannibal Woman."

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I'm looking for the right
words, but all I can think of

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is parachute or ice water.

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There's nothing but the sailboat
inside, me slowly trying

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to catch wind.

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Maybe, there's an old man
in it, maybe a small child.

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All I know is they'd
like to go somewhere.

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They'd like to see
the sail straighten,

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go tense and take
them someplace.

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But instead, they wait.

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A little tender wave comes
and leaves them right

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where they were all along.

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How did this happen?

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No wind I can conjure anymore.

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My father told me
the story of a woman

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larger than a mountain,
who crushed redwoods

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with her feet, who could swim
a whole lake in two strokes.

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She ate human flesh and
terrorized the people.

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I loved that story.

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[LAUGHTER]

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She was bigger than any monster,
or Bigfoot, or Loch Ness

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creature-- a woman
who was like weather,

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as enormous as a storm.

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He'd tell me how she'd walk
through the woods, each tree

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coming down, branch to
sawdust, leaf to skeleton,

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each mountain
pulverized to dust.

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Then, they set a trap--

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a hole so deep she could
not climb out of it.

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I have known that trap.

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Then, people set her
on fire with torches.

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So she could not
eat them anymore,

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could not steal their
children or ruin their trees.

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I liked this part too.

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The fire, I imagine how it
burned her mouth, her skin, how

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she tried to stand and couldn't,
how it almost felt good to her

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as if something was finally
meeting her desire with desire.

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The part I didn't
like was the end,

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how each ash that
flew up in the night

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became a mosquito, how she is
still around us in the dark,

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multiplied.

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I've worried my whole life
that my father told me this

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because she is my anger.

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First comes this hunger,
then abyss, then fire,

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and then a nearly
invisible fly made of ash

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goes on and on eating mouthful
after mouthful of those I love.

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