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The Nun On Her Civilizing Mission Studies the Siamese Concubine
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The Nun On Her Civilizing Mission Studies the Siamese Concubine

by
September 15, 2022
Painting of a durian fruit with a slice cut from it
Duran Fruit From A Large Tree, Sarawak, Borneo, Marianne North, 1876

Para Vadhahong is a Thai American poet and literature student.…

Her hands caked around the pit of a durian, she hums some immeasurable tune, shelters the bone with her music of touch. Hair shorn to the temple, shoulder exposed against fleas, heels marred with sweat and dirt, nipples bare to the full-throated sun— I can taste the harsh crackle of monsoon in this kingdom of drying days. With the hacking battle of her language, I convert teachings for pagan ears. Historia creationis mundi การสร้างจักรวาล ac redemptionis generis humani การไถ่ของเผ่าพันธุ์มนุษย์ I heard in some legend of theirs or was it history a great billowing queen who sacrificed her life in the smog of battlefield for her king; charging on the back of a war elephant, she took a cleaving wound from shoulder to heart, helmet shattering as she kissed ground, her daughter meeting the same wreck— clutched as she was upon the queen’s back. Explicatio sacrificii missae คำอธิบายของการเสียสละของคริสตจักร Explicatio rosarii คำอธิบายของลูกประคำ Is the moral, then, that a devotion of blood gains the quickest sympathies of redemption? Well, I honed my best prayers in clefted knuckles, waiting to be riddled anew with the light. It is a madness impinged upon my dreams, a misplaced courage of damnation to see— no woman could roam her fingers over the leaves of that first garden like her, fleshing all the world with fruits of abundance. De amore et cognitione Dei เกี่ยวกับความรักและความรู้ของพระเจ้า Explicatio Genesis คำอธิบายของปฐมกาล Were it not for the heathen animal of ignorance thrumming its fists against your chest this blighted world would not need saving this virtue of mine would not be trespassed upon the atlas would not crack into fault lines And if you were as hungry as I am doomed our tongues would swill the cup of trembling this proffering of salvation would surely poison so for the love of God might as well be mine
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Para Vadhahong is a Thai American poet and literature student. Their poetry is featured in Brain Mill Press, Kingdoms in the Wild, and Cargoes  and Gravel  magazines at Hollins University. They are very fond of puzzles and riddles.

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