Dona Aúrea, and: The Midwives, and: Dona Terezinha’s Oriole, and: Dona Orínia’s Hyacinth Macaw

Abstract

Dona Aúrea, and: The Midwives, and: Dona Terezinha’s Oriole, and: Dona Orínia’s Hyacinth Macaw Eleanor Stanford (bio) Dona Aúrea I was midwife to fear. Its crowning. Its bloody show. Midwife to sun opening the cervix of the valley, slipping through the narrow pass to Angêlica Falls. I was midwife to spirit and to form. To the smooth egg still warm from the chicken. Midwife to death, too. The wind astonishing the canyon. Shaking that overtakes a body in transition. There was no other. When they called me I came. [End Page 166] The Midwives Bahia, Brazil The secrets of philosophy are the secrets of the body. You think because we’re old and wear headscarves and lay our hands on pregnant bellies we don’t know how the baby got in there? You think we didn’t once, or many times, slink into the thicket at the edge of town with a man, or even by ourselves? The secrets of the body are deeper. You think we didn’t once or twice invite the delivery boy in for a quick fuck? Dona Terezinha’s Oriole The cage swings above cow pasture. Wind through the tree branches, and bars of light and dark shifting on the hard-trod ground. Even the beams of your own body are meant to open. You don’t believe me? Terezinha’s seen: ribs unhinge. Hips [End Page 167] pivot: the same frame that contains us sometimes lets us go. Are you surprised? But it’s the midwife’s job to bring suffering into the world as well as beauty. Sofrê, they call me. Do you think that these sweet syllables mean grief? She reaches her bent finger through the bars to touch my bright cupped flame. Dona Orínia’s Hyacinth Macaw Baxíos, Sergipe How tenderly she’d pinion me: my heart a small throb beneath her thumb. For years this went on: the Spanish came and went, bought up the coastline, paid in empty promises. Their fancy hotels ill- conceived, part-built, like the son she never stopped mourning, the boy born still half-fish. One can live an entire life in the shallows. The ocean murky-eyed like us; like us, sharp-tongued and flightless, spreading its gray wing. With firm and steady hands, she’d apply the styptic powder to stanch the blood. [End Page 168] Eleanor Stanford Eleanor Stanford is the author of two books of poetry, Bartram’s Garden and The Book of Sleep. Her poems and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals. She was a 2014–2016 Fulbright fellow to Brazil, where she researched and wrote about traditional midwifery. She lives in the Philadelphia area. Copyright © 2017 University of Nebraska Press