Two More Prose Poems ("Treesong" and "How Sukie Cross de Big Wata") by Sheree Renee Thomas

"How Sukie Cross de Big Wata" first appeared in Nalo Hopkinson's Mojo: Conjure Stories. Also appears in Thomas's Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems (discussed in part here, more generally).

Sukie is a kind of American Tall-Tale mythic figure who is there to support the Africans on the difficult first voyages across the ocean--a kind of bridge for their stories. It includes this lovely, potent line:

"And if you listen true, you will know when I am bending it and when I am telling it straight, ’cause like a river, every story got a bend."

 You can read this prose poem here in the Shotgun Lullabies excerpt.

You will love this prose poem more if you juxtapose it against "Treesong" which also is enhanced in the comparison.

"Treesong" first appeared in Rose Lemberg's An Alphabet of Embers reprinted by John Joseph Adams, appearing in Thomas's collection, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life.

This one moves closer to a speculative tale, relating the lives of trees as the younger ones desire to pick up their roots and cross "de Big Wata" in what might be a disastrous move.

"the young ones try to work themselves into any pool that mirrors the land, hoping it will lead them to De Big Wata and carry them back home to where the people remember their name."

Read this at Lightspeed.

Two Prose Poems ("The Jubilee" and "Not All Caged Birds Sing") by Sheree Renee Thomas

 Both first appeared in Fireside.

In "The Jubilee" slaves have just been freed:

"during the Jubilee, there was plenty of names. People shuffled them like cards and drew new ones out the deck, tried names on their tongues like new year clothes, whispered and shouted them into the bright clean air to see how they fit, licked their lips to see how they taste."

And in "Not All Caged Birds Sing" the world seems to be occupied a palimpsest of reality, dream and metaphor, amplifying the allusive title:

"Wind sang in that empty place, and I wanted to sing but my tongue sprouted roots and leaves. They wrapped around my throat until I could not breathe."

Both of these appear in the same magazine around the same time period. They seem to form part of a larger poetic sequence. They juxtapose well together, if intentional, although the location of other pieces would be greatly appreciated.

"Barefoot and Midnight" by Sheree Renée Thomas

First appeared in Apex Magazine. Recommended by Locus, Tangent Online. Reprinted by Paula Guran.

Mourning those who died in arson-burned The Freedmen’s School in Gayoso’s Flats, Dusa Dayan builds a "ragged mud doll":

"Wrapped in tree roots, its garment was tattered. Whatever color or pattern it once held faded long ago. A dark, rust-colored stain covered the space where its heart once was. It had no head. Only a red ribbon where it should be. It had no limbs. No mouth or plump cheeks and belly to kiss and pinch."

The doll has more to it than it first seems.

The story takes on another dimension in its final lines.

Read online at Apex.

The Dark Land by C. L. Moore

First appeared in Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales. Reprinted by Roger Elwood and Vic Ghidalia for a feminist anthology.

Jirel, on her death bed after receiving a pike-wound to her side, cannot be healed. As she is about to enter death with a priest to deliver last rites, she is whisked away to a new world.  

Commentary (with Spoilers)

Jirel is miraculously healed in the new world. However, it is by Pav, King of Romne, a kingdom with strange borders and ways of moving through it. She is not grateful, and he seems full of himself. He allows her to seek a weapon to fight him. If he should win, he gains her. If not, she gains her freedom.

She encounters a witch, described not unlike Jirel was described on her deathbed--white and death-like ("the face of Death itself") yet somehow attractive (Jirel is near the mountains she claimed to throw herself off of if Pav should somehow win her). The witch claims that Jirel is her rival, so presumably she had been or at least desired to be Pav's companion, lover, or queen. 

Despite the announcement of their rivalry, Jirel accepts the witch's advice on how to defeat the king--to put out the flame around his head with the flame around her head which he'd given to her. Presumably, the act is a humbling or breaking down of his ego. He protects her despite this, presumably because he might not be able to stop the witch from killing Jirel, a rival on the loose. 

Does Jirel like him now? Well, he's watched and admired her from afar. He's saved her life twice. She may or may not have cottoned to him as a partner (her first "lover" had done far less to merit her love, though), but surely she understands him differently.

Father Gervase is an interesting figure--some sort of Christian priest, presumably. He appears in two tales. With good advice in the first, he warns against certain action, which we learn to be wisdom--at least to an extent. His appearance here is probably to lend credence to the belief that, when her bed is empty, she was snatched by the devil himself. 

That may be her own perspective when she arrives. It seems that she likely has another feeling when she leaves. 

Christian imagery runs through the opening. It doesn't appear to be meant to make her be a Christ figure, but just to recall similar scenarios. She has a spear in her side as Christ had. And she spends time in another realm before returning to her own. Perhaps this is meant to signal that she'd visited Paradise--or a kind of--and, rejecting it, was ejected.

This is the first story to challenge Jirel's perspective, that her judgment of others or perspective may be flawed. This actually goes a long way to explaining Jirel's actions in the first two stories. The story foreshadows this perspective with "[t]he great two-edged sword which she wielded so recklessly in the heat of combat." 

Moore takes the sword away and this forces a new kind of confrontation, which would likely have been useless in this situation, anyway.  The witch calls her a "presumptuous fool" whom she promises to kill:

"Blind, hot, earthly woman, with your little hates and vengeances, how could you have reigned queen over Romne that is Darkness itself"

Perhaps as stated near the beginning, Pav is a kind of devil, but he seems awfully kind to be a devil. Perhaps he is a middle ground, or perhaps it is a place run by heaven and hell. Whatever it is, it's never really clarified. But comparisons to the afterlife are plentiful. 

On second thought, it seems Jirel is just happy to be back, which no one can blame her for. She left home where she was in control in multiple ways. Whether the events of the tale impacted her may not be visible until a later story--in the same way this story illuminates the reading of the first two. Perhaps not, though.

It's unclear yet what the stories are addressing--perhaps other stories of love between men and women in the genre, or perhaps her own encounters (the men often manipulate reality, which might mean writers, and she did marry the writer Henry Kuttner). Or is she addressing women, addressing possible misunderstandings? Or perhaps she's addressing society with an upper-class barbarian--too civilized, or not civilized at all.