Pontianak

By Bee Bee Tan

When we died,
I finally gave birth.
It was then the villagers called me
Pontianak, roaming vampire.

My baby on my hip,
I ride the wind;
farmwives and children quiver.
When the sky is wrung grey
and heavy clouds hang low,
it is my day to run
through the village by the river.

My baby whines.
We are blood hungry, thirsty.
Leaves whirl in wind,
and long nipah palms clash.

From the throes of birth to death,
I ride a raft bound with rawhides,
my baby by my side
On the river-raft, we pin past glades
like Shaitans released from Hades.
The Kinta River foams white;
tin sludge is carried low;
alluvium clay becomes mud.

My long hair, wind tossed, is my veil;
my shroud, my sail.
Draped in blood,
we eat the land;
my baby lives the way it dies.