Amy Sayre Baptista
Whitechapel Aubades
The Whitechapel Murders occurred in London’s East End between April 1888 and February 1891. The following mourning songs are excerpted in testament from a larger and growing manuscript of séance recordings from the area.
Polly Ann Nichols Addresses Visitors to Her Body at the Morgue[1]
When the police lay me out on the slab
they find eyes pecked away by rooks, a sunflower between my
teeth. The men grow dizzy staring into the dark-seeded center
stemming my swollen tongue.
When the monks come to boil flesh from bone
I dissolve. No relic remains.
Bone after bone,
white as God's memory.
Ash and curled as a blackbirds' severed foot.
Rag-pickers sort my clothes.
The velvet trim of my bonnet stiff with beetles. A rooks black feather
and a cracked egg alive with maggots chases
their fingers from my coat pockets.
Grief's song
my torn throat,
a tune
impossible to carry.
When the angels come to take my spirit
they find a dove unable to weep. They assure
the delicate bird that it will get better with time.
Angels pry open her beak
inflate lungs with lute and whistles. Pattern my constellation after a crow.
The white bird stutters a n d stutters.
Understand this tune lives and dies on your tongue
Open your mouth and let me out.
The angel told the dove: If you're willing to hurt enough you can have it.
So sing,
you faithless bird. Sing.
--
[1] Polly Ann Nichols was the first of the “canonical five” women murdered by Jack the Ripper in the Whitechapel area of East London. She was the mother of five children.
[1] Polly Ann Nichols was the first of the “canonical five” women murdered by Jack the Ripper in the Whitechapel area of East London. She was the mother of five children.
Catherine Eddowes Describes Life After Death[2]
|
The summer before I was murdered, I walked Brick Lane every day. Sewing a few days a week at a ladies shop, gathering scraps for the boot maker, and at night, I passed the evenings as I needed to. As we all needed to from time to time. Trading a man’s pleasure to pay my bread and a place to lay my head. A place you might rest without being rousted up red bitten by fleas or prodded by a stranger for a shag in the middle of the night. I gathered my share of men’s bruises and scoff, "bang-tail" they'd holler at me as I passed, or "step right, slag," as if they was the Queen's own brigade. The night he cut me open is just a shudder of light against the pavement, the wage I paid to pass there. I wander these same streets, a soul half-lit, untethered. Now, Brick Lane is populated by dark-skinned women in sari's and scarves brilliant as the finches and larks the bird-catchers used to sell here. And I am spirit covered in spice: saffron, curry-clouded. I cannot stop watching them, these bright Bengali women. My life fed on the hope of a boiled potato, but my shadow trails the taste of sweet curd. The girl, Asha, works in the curry shop on the corner, just past where the Ten Bells used to be. As she pours mustard oil, I hold out my hands to be pierced by gold. Illuminated in liquid. I am a haunt mad-hungry for touch, and she, just a girl who forbids her own desire. Her smile is widened by scars purple as plums. Cuts made by a man whose affection she did not return and thought her face his knife's tapestry. Her name in Bengali means hope, but Asha tells her mum that her name is a lie. She says, "a ghost with a murdered face walks in my shadow." But I can't leave her side. Her mum says, "You will make me a grandmother one day." She repeats the words lighting incense, touching her head and heart, hoping the Goddess Kali will hear her and make mercy from smoke and ash. When her mother speaks of men and babies, Asha sharpens her knife and says nothing. The women cut and chop, cut and chop. Knives and spatulas crushing and rolling. Hands made for giving. Palms resplendent as sunrise. They use every root, peel, and stem. I love them. I worship every move, for nothing is waste, not even the tiniest scrap is judged trash and thrown out. the sharpest blade never turns to hurt, but cuts, cuts, and cuts to cook comfort. |
--
[2] Catherine Eddowes, the third victim of Jack the Ripper, owned a coffee shop with her husband and sold penny poetry at public executions.
[2] Catherine Eddowes, the third victim of Jack the Ripper, owned a coffee shop with her husband and sold penny poetry at public executions.
Elizabeth Stride Demands a Viking Burial[3]
|
Slit the necks of nothing in my name. Slaughter only the sound of breaking ice. Bring the ashes of my incinerated child, stillborn and unburied. Bring my grey babe out from the furnace. Garb her in my own christening gown, for I was an infant once too, anointed on a sacrifice. With my cindered offspring, bring rope of maiden's hair, soil from the Telemark, pitchers of glacier-melt from Svalbard, I'll mix them in myth and pour them into my womb for binding. Lay out herring and pork with bread and honey. Fill the troughs with mead. I'll need four man-eating mares left on guard. Leave me silk to sew my own sails and as I stitch, I'll sing my daughter to sleep. Leave me fresh eggs. I'll swallow the golden centers whole, spit them into the sky and chant the sun into burning my passage home. Whisper my saga to whales. Let them sing of me if they will. No man's voice need attempt my tale. When they bury my ship, understand that we sail beyond Valhalla. We clutch the mast and I trace the map carved into my shinbone. Our eyes trained on a lost astronomy, past the origin of North, known only by gods and giants. |
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[3] Elizabeth Stride aka Gufstafsdotter, the 4th victim of the Jack the Ripper, was born in Sweden. Due to complication from contracting syphilis, she gave birth to a stillborn child. She was given a pauper’s burial in East London marked with a numbered grave,15509, square 37
[3] Elizabeth Stride aka Gufstafsdotter, the 4th victim of the Jack the Ripper, was born in Sweden. Due to complication from contracting syphilis, she gave birth to a stillborn child. She was given a pauper’s burial in East London marked with a numbered grave,15509, square 37
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Amy Sayre Baptista’s flash fiction collection, PRIMITIVITY, won the Black River Chapbook contest by Black Lawrence Press. Her writing has appeared in The Best Small Fictions (2017), Ninth Letter, The Butter, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. Performances include the Poetry Foundation (Chicago), Brown University and Columbia University. She is a former fellow and current co-director of CantoMundo, a scholarship recipient to the Disquiet Literary Festival in Lisbon, Portugal, and performs with Kale Soup for the Soul, a Portuguese-American artist’s collective. She is a co-director of the St. Louis Writers Workshop. She has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and teaches Humanities at Western Governors University. She lives in Illinois and is currently working on a novel.