Cronin, MTC

English

bepress Legal Repository

Burnt Things and Cinderella Perpetua

University of Michigan School of Law

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law Volume 4 Issue 2 1997 Burnt Things and Cinderella Perpetua MTC Cronin University of Sydney Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl  Part of the Poetry Commons Recommended Citation MTC Cronin, Burnt Things and Cinderella Perpetua, 4 MICH. J. GENDER & L. 253 (1997). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl/vol4/iss2/1  This Poem is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of Gender & Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact mlaw.repository@umich.edu. burnt thingsteyes widening into screens where animals-run-in-herds, someone shootingthe scene from a helicopter (one is always shot),the split-secondof a blink,and darkness becomes the sort of sleep analogous to death,all we can do with it,is imagine...and back at the hotel-her hair, smelling like burnt things-he leaveshis camera on a chair by the window, lens cracked, this roomasks him to be soft,takes his clothes; the woman took hers all the way to where her intentions weremisunderstood and she's been paid for it ever since. Together they arehuntingfor the most comfortable-the most gratifying-position, (at one pointher toes curl around his ears and he imagines he sees her from theair). Haircovers his eyes widening into the darkness of her auctioned breast and itbecomes sleep. Tomorrow he will take more pictures of animalsbeing killedand she will spend the day doing for her mother the things she did whenshe was a girl, cleaning and preparing the deadfor burial-rituals, repetitious-and the baby sucks, its father is on safari, but one of the ones with guns,not a camera. They told her that fertility is greaterin killersand she offers some kind of thanks for that and as the beast that runsat the front of the pack crashes to the ground she blinks and wipesher eyeswidening into those of all the men who come here to live cheaplyoff her flesh-it burns,for themher [peculiar, fiscal, carrion] ritual [of survival]--doing things withburnt things254 MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF GENDER & LAW [Vol. 4:253cinderella perpetuatlittle one of the ashes"we live in a world where there are so manymannequins of women, undressed at midnight(but he didn't take off her clothes, they weresomebody else's clothes)and watching the streets for a slipper that matchestheir vigilance-they are, my dear, doing foreverinstead of being young. And yes, they all holdtheir head on that one angle and their handslike that, like that, like that, skin impervious to air-conditioning(if you invented a machine you could measurethe rate at which they absorb love);eyes, that stranded colour of menaced animalsbehind the glass..."But sleep, little one"and dream you have no idea what you are-thesmudge of ash on the end of your nose is cute and...the will be dressed againbefore morningcMTC Cronin-t Copyright 1997 MTC Cronin, all rights reserved.* MTC Cronin is a writer of poetry and prose who lives in Sydney, Australia. She is aqualified solicitor, holds Masters Degrees in English and Creative Writing, and cur-rendy works as a researcher in the field of Feminist Legal Theory in the Law Facultyat the University of Sydney.

https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1166&amp;context=mjgl

Burnt Things and Cinderella Perpetua

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