NaPoWriMo Day 15: "Sarah Good"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt:  "Our prompt for today (optional, as always), takes its inspiration from the idea of a poem as a sort of tiny play, which can be performed dramatically. In the 1800s, there was quite a fad for monologue-style poems that lend themselves extremely well to dramatic interpretations (this kind of work was basically Robert Browning’s jam). And Shakespeare’s plays are chock-a-block with them. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own dramatic monologue. It doesn’t have to be quite as serious as Browning or Shakespeare, of course, but try to create a sort of specific voice or character that can act as the “speaker” of your poem, and that could be acted by someone reciting the poem."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: For today’s prompt, write a prediction poem. Make a prediction. Write about another person’s correct or incorrect prediction. Or, you know, be unpredictable.

Of course when I read the prompt for a persona poem, I immediately thought I'd write as Mary Dyer. But, though she issued prophetic warnings to Massachusetts, the idea of prediction made me think of convicted Salem "witch" Sarah Good's famous prophecy to the Rev. Nicholas Noyes -- a prediction which was in fact fulfilled years later when he died in 1718 of a brain hemorrhage which led to him choking on his own blood. I had also been thinking recently about a strand of anger that is in me and flares up under provocation, so I gave it to Sarah. In a rather Spoon River Anthology manner, she speaks here from beyond the grave.

I derived tremendous pleasure from creating the voice of this pissed-off Puritan woman -- still bad-ass but less noble than Mary Dyer. I guess that I would choose an early American subject for a dramatic monologue is pretty predictable of me. I need to keep working on this poem, with a bit more time to fully assemble her biography. I also didn't get her small daughter Dorcas into the poem, who was imprisoned for witchcraft along with her.

Sarah Good

Hanged July 29, 1692, Salem

The Lord knows I was not a witch!

Had I been one, they’d have seen it long since

for certain, those liar-addled fools.

For who’d consent to live so long as I did

with the Devil himself helping her,

could she have made all to her wish?

To go ragged so, belabored, without beauty?

All saw me a hag, older than two-score,

yet I died not even that. Each year is two

in poverty, is what I used to crack

to anyone who’d listen, looking to women

who’d grimace to me nodding, shrug.

Sisters we could be then, at least in passing.

There was little enough of that, these many years.

They started to step back from me early

as if they feared my Daniel’s endless debt

would catch their skirts and be dragged home

to poison their own husbands.

Our fortunes pined; cheerful still, he ever thought

the next harvest, next trade would save us.

Hopeless I knew it was, yet what could I say?

I thought it sin then, to crush man’s hope.

But my anger at his weakness licked at me

like a small, growing fire crackling in my chest.

The fever caught him; he died in innocence.

Then I wed William, poor still of course,
but strong, red-faced, jaw like a mule.

I watched his hard hand grasp the mug-handle.

Together we could do something, I thought,

but all it proved was starve and fight and beg.

I told him all that I knew plain now, no girl,

knowing my own good sense. I may have raised

my own fist a time or two, I confess it.

He never listened. The old anger flared,

grew, mounted towards my throat,

like something hot, wet, with a taste of iron.

Oh, I admit I might have made my mark

in the book of any fine devil who saw

my woman's worth, and let me have my will.

I know too well none ever came to me.

And last, the pack of them, the misters, and most

Reverend Nicholas Noyes, in his clean coat and breeches:

soft hands and battering words, confess, confess.

Another man I’d never get to listen

as I swung the blade of good hard sense.

The starting babe kicked inside my womb,

the old rage flared, now almost choking me;

it flew from my mouth and spoke itself,

I, Sarah Good, preacher and prophet at the last:

I’m no more a witch than you are a wizard

and if you take away my life

then God will give you blood to drink!

I saw them hurriedly scribe it down.

Back to prison then, to my travail, the babe’s death,

and then the crowd and tree and noose. Alas!

But for that one moment I could almost think,

for this it has all been worth it; that the world

should remember me, Sarah Solart Poole Good,

lowly, beggar, never heard, bad goodwife

who declared her innocence withal,

a woman without fear, the chosen one possessed

by God’s own power in the curse of man.

                

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy/cite/quote without permission.