<i><b>Wicked Alice Poetry Journal

Nicolette Bethel

The Carpenter Seals Lily's Widowhood (1943)

While Nassau fixed its eyes on dukes and counts
and murdered knights, while every mouth was fat
with feathered corpses, cindered beds and fingerprints
on screens too charred to trust, with forearms scarred and burned,
with shady gumshoes, Nazis, Dagoes, Swedes and Jews,
diverted lawyers, loyal wives -- Eddie faltered in the heat.

Each day his limb-bloat hardened. Poison twisted in his gut.
H
is skin grew deadleaf dry and black like clouds drawn thick
across the sky. He couldn't piss; he couldn't sweat; and when his heart
made flutters in his chest, he whispered, Love, my house is burning.

Lily checked the stove, the yard, the sky, and whispered back:
No fire here. But Eddie smiled. He knew the truth, and lacked
the words to tell it. The doctor stopped at the bedroom door
and beckoned Lily, shook his head. My dear, he said, no fire there.

Nicolette Bethel was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, where she currently resides. She has lived, studied and worked in the UK and Canada, and is now apprenticed to the Government for her sins and others’. She is a playwright, a poet, a fiction writer and an anthropologist, and her work has been published in a variety of places, including The Oxford and Cambridge May Anthologies, Calabash, The Caribbean Writer, The Amherst Review, The Paumonak Review, II, The Avatar Review, and numerous local and regional collections.