Stigmata

 

Maria Dzumaga is dying.

Her stubborn chin has softened

and her cumbersome teeth will no more fly

across dining room tables,

when people who should know better

protest the removal of plates and utensils

before their meal is eaten.

She has ceased to leap from flights

of stairs and first floor windows

in order to annihilate her feet.

 

Maria Dzumaga was forcibly marched

from Poland to Siberia,

before fleeing on foot to India.

It was scarcely her boast, but for those

who closed their eyes in disbelief,

she’d defiantly take off shoes and socks

and triumphantly point to her feet.

Each big toe had climbed over its neighbour

and lay under the next in line.

Incontrovertible proof!

   

The priest arrives to perform the last rites:

Maria Dzumaga is ecstatic.

She motions towards the miraculous feet

and the priest peers beneath her blanket;

they speak for some minutes in Polish.

Then out fly the teeth, her face splutters scarlet,

she struggles to rise, we seize her arms

and Maria Dzumaga falls silent.

She dies, dies in shame.

The priest explains her contorted digits

were symbolic of sins she refused to acknowledge.

At war and in peace,

internment camps and asylums;

arms and feet reaching over and under,

arms and feet, in a body.