Thursday, July 26, 2012

Long Pig II

The proofs for Solstice Moon Solstice Sun  arrive tomorrow!!  In the meantime,  I'm submitting a bunch of my short stories to the Delaware Division of the Arts for an artist fellowship.

Here's the second of the Long Pig shorts.


Long Pig II
I stretch my consciousness across billions of galaxies wheeling and pulsing with energy and life --with void and death.  I count them as a hen on a planet yet to be will count her eggs.
The one we call Trickster snickers and remarks, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
 But I take my job seriously. I am Death. I am Change. None deny me my due.    
On the still non-existent Hen planet, some will call me Cerridwen, Hel, Pele, Kali, Tiamat, The Stern Mother, and The Crone. I am the ravening sow who consumes her young.  I am the liberator of souls who dances the rhythms of life and death until love and rage are one. Adorned with a necklace of fifty severed head, I dance upon my husband’s corpse, upon your corpse, and the corpse of every being who was or will be.  
Time and space are running out for this here and now.  It is stretched to its limit and touches the realm where myths are made.  I number each existence on planets that have been, are, and will be.  Rage rises against the cruelty unleashed and the lessons unlearned until I am consumed--taut as a boil ready to burst.  This universe quivers—suns sing their death songs.  I strain and roar. Mass collapses into mass. Each dying world becomes a bead upon my necklace.
. The dying universe surges in its death throes as  I devour dark matter, suns, nebulae, planets, satellites, blood, bone, sinew and  atoms until all that’s left is a conflicting silence---hot and throbbing with potential.  
     Eons pass. Bound to their galaxies, suns and planets form. Life evolves.  I am imagined on the Hen planet and worshipped in many forms.  Right now, it amuses me to incarnate where my worshippers are (as yet) unaware of my identity.  I survey them upon a reviewing stand   beside a lovely young woman crowned with a rhinestone tiara.  A satin sash draped across her chest reads, “Pork Princess.”   She is my handmaiden, for I am Cerridwen, the Great White Sow.  Humans admire my solid majesty—the long thick muscles of my groomed length. My pungent female scent attracts and alarms them. They cannot resist me.
The satin sash draped across the wide barrel of my torso reads, “Supreme World Champion.”   The crowd clusters—one bears an offering. I raise my huge head and grunt a deep, guttural warning.  He backs away in reverent fear as I thrust my snout into the cauldron of mash and turnips.   Fourteen pendulous pink teats hang beneath the swag of my belly where my unborn children squirm—waiting to burst forth.  All of the energy and potential of life is coiled within them—within each being.  It will erupt and will be stretched to its allotted limit, before I consume it so that the cycle continues. 
In this moment, I am inclined towards clemency because these beings appreciate me and because my body teems with life.  Besides, I do not wish to harm my handmaiden who smells of sweet lavender soap.  For now, she is The Maiden.  But I will always be the Stern Mother and the Crone. All will know my rage and my fierce consuming love.

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