Babayaga

pots while watching the other women work. They cleaned out the dirt, gravel, and pus from the open wounds, applied herbs and poultices to fight infection. Some of the women sang. The men writhed and screamed. Over the next few days, most died, but some were saved. Elga took directions well and could feel the women observing her out of the corners of their eyes, judging her strength as she worked. When the riders came to tell them of the battle past the next rise, the women packed up and went off to find the injured. Elga traveled with them. This is where her long life began. These nurses had skills and secrets.
    XIII

    Witches’ Song Seven

    Here they are, gawking ones, a pocketful of curses,
    not empty spells cast by angry incompetents,
    red-faced over banquet tables, nay,
    but sordid troubles embroidered well
    unfurled in spells untoward
    able to ignite the great metamorphoses, yes, you’ve seen well,
    but subtler spoilers come in handy too,
    right spit words that make you miss crucial connections in distant stations,
    leaving you as lone, soft, and vulnerable prey
    for salivating wolves who dine on lamb and ewe.
    Or you drool yourself, dripping constant stains, or spilling through passing palsy drops of shame
    from pewter spoons and crystal bowls,
    splotching dress shirts and fine silks, all now spoiled for public judgment.
    Then fun too: rich, pungent flatulence summoned at intimate times,
    with counterpoints of noxious belch and burp,
    and rich myriad tapestries of ill blushings,
    lavender rashes, and textured boils,
    a plague of unreachable itches
    desperate for their needed scratches,
    all indulgently accented with lasting urinary burnings.
    Not enough? More, then, more. Grave addictions, the harshest needs,
    the barest raw hungers, all voracious
    open-mouthed, and panting to fill a gaping hole
    with alcohol, baccarat, horse cocks, or the poppy scar’s sap, yes.
    Then of course taunting self-doubts,
    gnats of insecurities, shaming anxieties
    that flash white and hollow like lightning bolts tearing
    through sturdy hilltop elms.
    A vague but constant sense of forgetfulness,
    always nipping with haunt
    or a shadowed guilt for an imagined crime
    that chews and frays at your tired mind.
    Oh, a fierce envy for new polished shoes or great worthless land tracts,
    a fevered lust for rubies, sapphires, pearl, and other beachcombed stones,
    a gravitational attraction and steady pull
    toward expensive strangers.
    A gift for spilling teacups and dropping china,
    a tendency to catch cloth on lit candles
    or absently forgetting hearth and stoves
    till cherished cottage and castle have all turned to cinder.
    A strong wind for ill rumors,
    the instinct to fold both winning hands and good enterprise.
    Thick ears, stubborn pride, intolerance for strange skin and foreign tribes.
    A profound, waist-swelling and spine-splitting constipation,
    thick running noses spilling green, infused with muck,
    or, worse, eyes weeping ceaselessly till red, bloody, and blind.
    Our choice, we can pick, between sullen disappointments of impotence or the sorry prodding signals of poorly timed erections,
    and even better yet, a splendid epilepsy of unending ejaculation.
    A constant aching and swooning in extreme sexual longing
    for the inappropriate people and inanimate things.
    Then there’s the murderous, a matricidal hunger, a patricidal bend, or, to be simple again,
    we can loosen an indiscreet tongue
    providing an unwanted gift for grave offense
    and a penchant for fouling any convivial humor.
    Yes, more than once we’ve been known to bestow the naked
    pining for limelight,
    the stark drive for a crown,
    and the false nobility of immortal ambitions.
    Finally, and darkest of all, the most elegant curse,
    a numbing inability to sense or comprehend true virtue:
    constancy, patience, generosity, and dear kindness,
    when they are held in the palm of your very own hand,
    seated by your hearth, lying in your bed,
    when all that could fulfill your own heart’s hope
    until your last and final day
    is standing by your side, bright-eyed and true,
    while you, so oblivious, set your hungry eye
    a-wandering …
    XIV

    Noelle awoke cold and shivering on the stoop. The chicken was asleep in her arms, its head tucked under one russet wing. The old woman had said she would be right back but now the streets were almost bare of traffic and the sidewalk was empty, so she guessed some time had passed, and yet Elga was nowhere in sight. Noelle rose and, hauling