Nancy White

Setting Zipporah Free

Between us we made one pious bride,  
            then dutiful wife. On and on, this execution,   
            and his wealth made it bearable to sit or stroll  
            commendably. I didn’t think about the burden,  
            not until the army came, till the elders said  
            In five days we surrender. Who were they  
            to give away our grain, the children  
              
            into slavery again? Of the six? Two  
            were suitors to my widowhood, their eyes  
            across the table flickering. Zipporah knew,  
            saw it rise in me. She says boredom had grown  
            choking, but I say anger snapped my filligreed  
            obedience. I called for the scarves and skirts  
            of my marriage, ones my “husband” liked.  
              
            Dance for me, he’d say. I felt a fool
swaying my hips, couldn’t look him in the eye.  
            To untie me was the work of a minute,  
            his stuttering small white hands . . .  
            But when the chosen robes clung to me  
            and shimmered, I shamed no children,  
            only my village, which had abandoned us all.  
              
            Zipporah! How we combed and painted. My hair  
            glinting in the sun unbound, I said to the council  
            You know me by my name. Give me the five days.
            Their gaze crawled after me, down to the enemy tents.  
            Zipporah knows the truth is we ran out of wine and still  
            he looked at me like a general. But he slept . . .  
            How easy it was~two swings of the blade, one  
              
            for the soft in him, asleep, and then the spine.  
            He hardly made a sound, even less  
            than when he finished between my thighs. Zipporah  
            came~the empty bag, a cloth to wrap him in~
and took my hand. She carried him. She listened  
            to words and words before the council.  
            Lead me home to my husband’s house,  
                
            the sound of boys playing, afternoons of new light.  
            I gave her up, who bore the bagged and bloody deed,  
            who veiled my appetite and lies. She wept  
            when she covered his face~I won’t forget~
 
            and bowed her head to his guards. I remember  
            she left behind her sash and the gold bangles.  
            My steady one. I freed her~as if she were mine. 
                
	_____

            Nancy White has been a fellow at Fine Arts Work 
Center, in Provincetown. Her first book, Sun, Moon, Salt,
won the Washington Prize for Poetry.