1591 c/o Zachary Whalen

1591

This year started on Tuesday

Eight hurricanes this year

I swallowed so much air

Like, shitloads

1590 c/o Shiona Tregaskis

Blood Filled My Mouth When I Spoke

i) Agnes Sampson was the first one in, tufty scalp bleeding, already in the image of herself reoccurring. A white dress with a red cross painted on. I followed her. At one time, I thought I would have followed her anywhere, but this was itself a dead end. She sat down, told me they'd shaved everything, they'd shaved her cunt, everything. I could believe that. I peeled an orange. I gave the orange to Agnes. She broke it, sweeping zest where her long hair was now gone. I kept the peel, it sweated my palm as if the pith were flesh.

ii) Gelie Duncan arrived, took the last empty seat and spilled someone's tea. Then we all had to introduce ourselves, even though we knew each other, and say why we were there. My tongue was shredded dry by the witches' bridle so I couldn't speak but they said it was the rules everyone had to participate so I did. They asked Gelie if she'd kissed the Devil's arse cheeks, if she'd kissed them in the pulpit. She said she had not.

iii) Later that day, Gelie wore thumbscrews and changed her mind about the Devil.

iv) It is natural how we lie. As I listened I wished I could take myself from then, be absent from now, be missing from then. What if I raised myself a ghost in some former world past the smudged curve of memory. What would it be to return to possibility, if such a thing existed. To track the rib and tip of time and come back intact. It is essential how we lie.

v) Blood filled my mouth when I spoke. There was so much blood in my mouth. I could only hear the questions from a distance. It was King James, the actual King James, who was asking the questions. He asked what is the best type of cow and what is your favourite food for a picnic. He came closer and asked more questions, on wig-fitting, fakery, midwifery, beekeeping. Each question made every person in that room feel that life is always what it's like, never what it is.

vi) The king had great forensic skill.

vii) It was like the time this one card came unsigned on that birthday I was ill with the pox. I said to my husband, here, look at this one: the picture on the front reminds me of the sea, even though it's definitely very far from the sea. There was one blank card each year thereafter.

viii) While Gelie rearranged all her furniture when she heard we were accused, I let the safe edges of my home be still. I used to lie in the room made up for night with pictures on the walls that were set so I could see them clearly from the bed. These pictures illustrated everything I knew about love and solitude.

ix) Eventually Anges told the court the king's private wedding vows. She whispered them, verbatim.

x) Which is how the whole thing really took off. They garrotted bald Agnes, and burned her to ashes. Then there was a huge storm, suddener than ever, that lifted off roofs, closed off streets, drowned all the crops. A sinkhole took Gelie's house into the earth. That is the constancy of water. Once in the water you are alone. After the storm, awnings dripped.

1589 c/o Chantel Louise Tattoli

Whatever It Takes Is Said

In Africa, they accuse. You listened under their heat with their textiles leaning into you, so heady, so you could believe in this magick, too. Societal tension, it is handled by such sharp fingers that the pointing out of a fall guy—a witch—that’s the actual craft here.

The video you show is very bleary, but anyway, who wants to watch a person set on fire in HD? It’s like the camera filmed through its own tear-filled eye, and if anything, those who have not objected to watch will know it is really real because the industry only acts in perfect conditions. But this—that, a victim—is real. That person burned. Of all the questions to put to you, professor, the one you get oftenest is about the smell. And smell, implicated as it is in tasting, it must be that the thing they wonder about is the taste.

You tell them how deliciously human meat grills, as beef and fatty pork do together on the same grid. That blood, of course, is metallic. Skin crisps, looking and smelling of charcoal, and if they’ve leaned into a candle and singed those 60s-mod bangs they thought were what-a-good-idea, they know for sure that hair goes up smelling its sulfury way. Spinal fluid does land mustily floral on the palette. But—the smell of the human body burned, overall—it isn’t likeable. And it stays with, phantom as the formaldehyde from their dissections, how they smell it days later in the street and then kissing their great aunt’s cheek, their noses mistaken and wrinkled.

No different—this, what happened in your film—than historic burnings. The Burning Times in Europe were 1550-1650. In 1589, some 130 witches burned in the German town of Quedlinburg. In all—and the archival evidence is doubtful—perhaps a hundred thousand, 80 percent of whom were women. Some call it a holocaust, and it was. Gendercide. Woman-hunting. The old poor unprotected single women or widows, the non-church-goers who paid their way doing herbal medicine, they were easy. So much of it was economical—the redistribution of wealth that came with socio-cultural shifts, the regular threatening of status quo. Or if the crops failed, then some were pointed to.

Some would burn.

You look at the faces of students you’re losing. Today, you say, today, stomachs grumble in sub-Saharan Africa. And people hiss. Witch, witch. You’re a witch.

1588 c/o BL Pawelek

1587 c/o Buster Jones

On what remains of the demolished theatre, The Rose.


Philip Henslowe, John Foxe, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Francesco I de' Medici and Otomo Sorin enter, sharing a packet of biscuits.

PHILIP to himself, breaking away from the group, dancing with gusto: My body is here to incubate many, many shits. Yeah! He attempts to high-five TOYOTOMI, who ignores him.

TOYOTOMI to himself, shouting in the face of a Matryoshka doll: You’re so fucking full of yourself.

The audience laughs. Toyotomi hurls the doll into the audience. It hits a child in the face. The child bursts into flames. His neighbours catch fire but sit patiently.

JOHN to himself, stripping off his t-shirt sexily: The Gospel having spread itself into Persia, the pagan priests, who worshipped the sun, were greatly alarmed. To the audience. Do you like that, guys? Huh?

FRANCESCO to himself, holding a snail’s shell: You see, I thought that if I pulled this off, the little guy would be able move faster, but it just made him more... sluggish. Curtsies to audience, winks and lays down. After a short while he proceeds to hump a crack in the stage.

OTOMO to himself, looking in his satchel, panicked: Where is my wife?!

The audience laughs. A time machine appears on stage, tinkling.

TOYOTOMI to himself, punching his palm: How many times has a semi-colon even been used in a text message outside the context of a wink?! He pulls at his hair, walks aggressively towards the front of the stage, screams, jumps into the audience.

PHILIP to himself: My body is here as a vessel through which money passes! Huzzah! He attempts to ‘bump fists’ with JOHN, who ignores him.

Mary, Queen of Scots steps out of the time machine, drinking a beer, smelling of old milk.

JOHN to himself, chewing gum wearily, absent-mindedly removing his pantaloons: The first persecution of the Church took place in the year 67, under Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome. Mmmm. He puts his hands behind his head and rotates his hips while addressing the audience. Do you like that? Oh yeah.

OTOMO to himself, weeping gently, watching as hair pushes itself out of his palms toward the ceiling: I am a gigantic chalk rabbit. I need my wife. I am afraid. I need my mother. I am afraid. I have no wife. I am a Buddhist monk. I am a Christian.

MARY to herself, in a monotone, drinking a beer: These guys Jesus what the fuck

FRANCESCO to himself, standing slowly, blowing kisses down at the crack in the stage: I am the tallest clock tower. My family are murderers. My child is a changeling. My first wife died. My second wife died. I am about to die.

Francesco dies of malaria or else he has been poisoned.

TOYOTOMI to himself, trying clumsily to climb back on to the stage: I would like to hug someone or else kick them through a window. Whichever. Probably kicking them would be better. He finally scrambles on to stage but screams and jumps into the audience again where he is torn to shreds and then eaten by three teenage girls in school uniform.

MARY to herself, bored, patting her various pockets. Her confusion is followed by a flicker of recognition: That fucking Stegosaurus. She walks over to the time machine and steps through the door cracking her knuckles.

OTOMO to himself, curling up, becoming an ever smaller ball of wool: Where is my wife? Every time I would say something purple and gentle and she would punch me until I became a stone windmill. I need my wife. Only that. He begins to cry more violently. His face rolls off his skull down into his hands, his body becomes a skeleton.

JOHN to himself, now nude, pouting, penisless: Many eminent persons in the church and state fell martyrs to the ignorance and ferocity of the pagans. To the audience. How about that, huh? You like that? A huge timber moon falls on John and crushes him quietly.

PHILIP attempting to ride a unicycle: I am the emotional centre of this play. I am here. I am the most important part. I am alive.

Exeunt.

Several billion years pass.

The sound of a didgeridoo.

The end.

1586 c/o Jason Lee Norman

Voronezh. Samara. Tyumen.

They have a saying in Russia: Live in Voronezh, work in Samara, die in Tyumen. In honour of Saint Rose, born on the banks of the Voronezh, fed the hungry and the poor of Samara, torn apart by wolves in Tyumen on the exact date that she had herself predicted.

Saint Rose, born in Voronezh, the city on the river. The city built by Peter the Great. Saint Rose, who was called Rose when her nurse swore on her life that she witnessed Rose’s face turn into a flower before her eyes on the day of her birth. Saint Rose, raised like a flower in the pot of dirt and dung that was Voronezh, the diamond on the river Voronezh. Saint Rose, patron saint of Russia. Rose with the beautiful singing voice. The nuns swooned and thanked God for sending them the voice of an angel. They begged her to stand up for solos during Sunday service. Saint Rose, who could not stand to be desired, filled her mouth with sand and drank scalding coffee and finally took a vow of silence.

Saint Rose worked in Samara. Samara, the city of industry, economic capital, financial capital, transport hub. Samara, the jewel on the river Volga, where Saint Rose fasted thrice weekly and fed the poor and the invalid. Rose who as a young woman became even more desired for her shape than for her angelic voice as a child. Saint Rose, who smelled like fresh cut flowers and men would lust after her as she returned home from her works of charity. Men would fight in the streets over Saint Rose, who hated to be desired, and the men would cut each other’s flesh at the hopes that she would stop to dress their wounds or to pray with them as their blood that smelled of vinegar soaked their shirts. After some men proposed marriage to her in the streets as she returned home from Sunday services, Saint Rose took a vow of perpetual virginity. Saint Rose the chaste, the pure, who could not stand to be desired, became desired even more. Saint Rose, who covered her face with pepper and lye and suffered the searing burns and boils that would never heal so that she could continue to feed the hungry and the injured denizens of Samara.

In Tyumen, city of exiles, frozen city, city of the forgotten, Saint Rose came to live in solitude. Emerging from her self-imposed exile only for the flowers in her garden, to receive the sacraments, or to sell her needlework, giving most of the money to the church and spending the rest on only a little stale bread and hard cheese. Saint Rose, the only woman in Russia who could make anything beautiful grow from the frozen soil of Tyumen, whose needlework and intricate embroidery grew more popular every day, became an object of desire one last time. Word spread that Saint Rose was sectioning off pieces of her beauty and selling it at market. One Sunday, as she had predicted, they came from as far away as Samara, as far off as Voronezh for a piece of Saint Rose. When the flowers and the needlework ran out they began to take pieces of her. They started with her toes. A man sliced off eight toes with a sausage knife and ran some silver thread through them in groups of four. They cut up her calloused hands and peeled the skin from her back to patch holes in their clothing. They took everything, even pieces of her wrinkled and scarred face that resembled the surface of an asteroid-battered moon. When all that was left was a small pile of cloth and bits of hair and teeth they all went back to their cities on the river, to their frozen houses, to wait for a day when another saint would be born and grace their lives with her beauty and kindness.

There is a small church in Tyumen that claims to have the skull of Saint Rose on display for members of the congregation to venerate and gaze upon. It is rumoured that upon the skull lay a crown of roses.