For those of you who haven't read Cruelty or maybe not even
Killing Floor, this next poem I'm
going to read this more like the old Ai.
Not that this is the new Ai, but there's certain parts of me
that seem new at times.
This is called "The Mother's Tale."
"Once when I was young, Juanito, there
was a ballroom in Lima where Hernán, your father,
danced with another woman and I cut him across the cheek
with a pocket knife.
Oh, the pitch of the music sometimes,
the smoke and rustle of crinoline.
But what things to remember now on your wedding day.
I put a kettle of hot water into the wooden tub
where you are sitting.
I was young, free, but Juanito, how
free is a woman born with Eve's sin between her legs.
And inside her, Lucifer sits on a throne of abalone shells.
His staff with the head of John the Baptist skewered on it.
And in judgment, son, in judgment,
he says that women will bear the fruit of the tree we
wish so much to eat.
And that fruit will devour us generation by generation.
So, my son, you must beat Rosita often.
She must know the weight of a man's hand, the bruises that
are like the wounds of Christ.
Her blood that is black at the heart
must flow until it is as red and pure as his.
And she must be pregnant always.
If not with child, then with the knowledge that she
is alive because of you, that you can take her life more
easily than she creates it, that suffering
is her inheritance from you and through you
from Christ who walked on his mother's body
to be the king of heaven."
[APPLAUSE]
I sent that to--
Ms. wanted some poems for anniversary--
for anniversary issue, right?
But the editor wrote back and said,
sorry, I will take the other one.
We've got to stay away from religion.
So there are things apparently that Ms. cannot deal with,
you know, apparently.
They took another one.