ANGRY WOMAN
ANGRY WOMAN i. A hard-working folk-poet and hick’s last thought before Nodding off after way too much kvass with his lunch and then Lurching to rest in the shade of their tiny allotment’s sole Wrinkled, worm and pecker-fretted joke of an apple tree— NO SNAKE, NO PARADISE, name of a book he once Wrote in vain—was how bitterness can give female complaint Agreeably womanly curves—and yet this folk-poet had Forgotten how his worn-out spouse could read his brain, Try as he might to deaden and numb her sour critique, her Homemade bread, her cheese, her bob chorba, with his Wretched beverage of choice, as she rattled on about his ii. Lack of backbone and spine, always getting around to his Sorrowful spigot, he who’d shoveled since dawn, cow, horse, Even dog manure for their landlord’s stupid but gorgeous wife’s Stupid flower. He suspected she too smelled nice. His own Home stunk of himself, his semi- lunatic wife and what Animals needed sleeping indoors with them, its stench So acrid it could draw tears. But speak of the devil And out she comes, stands arms akimbo, head tossed Back, eyes shut tight, smiling at heaven, heaving Deep sighs and barely breathing. She glances at last At her own woebegone patch, beholds that huge, Green and white watermelon just as a swirling Horse-fly’s warning drone falls still. She senses and sees iii. It has settled on her man’s brow, which explains the Stutter she’d heard in his snore’s normal roar. Dazed By the sun’s mute and masculine penetration of her Tender eyelids’ thin skin, obeying only the voice now Of her inner goddess, she seizes and gaily lifts Her watermelon high. No flying vampire with wings Of veined iridescence should spoil her man’s hard-earned, And honest slumber, and she splashes the bug’s guts On his hard-headed, soft-hearted brow. Her man didn’t Die, nor did he ever ask her, Why? I too try to follow Folk-poetry’s rule, to let all sleeping dogs lie. KR, 8.4.2026
This felt like a folk myth dug out of a poisoned garden. The imagery - the beauty and yet the darkness of it, the density of the objects - stays with me: the watermelon, the horsefly, the tiny apple tree. Everything felt physical, almost painfully alive.
I love the dream or nightmare logic of an old village tale, where the ordinary becomes strange and the domestic becomes mythical. Where love slowly turns into cruelty, and cruelty becomes another language of intimacy.
Hah! If only men were not dogs, women would not need to perform such lethal courtesies! Or so they believe, in words borrowed from their own folk-poets.
The ice floe upon which this eskimo squats melteth rapidly. And the only song he hears, stirring from the choir, is "We Didn't Start the Fire."
Great work as always, Ser Kenneth!