Aithrí

In Her Name

Mary Magdalene is posited as Christianity’s exemplar of repentance, the apostle of Christ, the faithful woman, freed of seven demons. Worthy of hymnal adoration, and biblical heralding… but the rankle, the blister, the problem was she was robust, energetic. A prostitute. None of which were revered in the picture of the Christian feminine. Hence, the embodiment of devotion had a dark reputation worthy of punishment. The Magdalen Laundries, blackened bricks binding blackened souls, an imposition on the streets of Dublin. A four-story building strung together with crumbled copper, devoid of life. For seventy years, there were eleven copies of these impositions in Ireland, with ten thousand girls, raspingly named ‘Penitents’ passing through. No pay was given, as they were deemed Magdalenes, fallen women, punished, then ‘saved’ by their labour for the Church. Each girl came to the Laundries on different, dust-clad tracks. Some had been sent from brothels, orphanages, and were considered ‘dangerous’ by their own family. Sheets had to be fed into the dryers, vestments and shirts ironed. After the scald and burn wore away at the girls, they were locked in their dormitories from the early evening and awoken for morning Mass. 

Many women never left. Uneducated, distinctly institutionalised, branded. With no support or contact from the outside world. Left without an individual name or identity, but known by the walls that enclosed her.

I

“The Monastery of our Lady of Charity”

“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out”

Luke 8:2

The dust-clad grounds lie bare now,
Streams of sun trace the cracks on the laden stone
Twisting their way around the veins of the wooden bough
The pearly tears of slaughter lay white as bone.
God’s window opens in these places,
Although the stone, now laced with mold,
Holds the delicate etches of 30,000 faces,
Most will never know what it is to grow old.
To feel the stain of the scald and pound.
Incised within wrinkles, memories that won’t drown.

The light has faded now.
Smudges of gold turned cinnamon brown.
Penitents.
The word seeps out of the place, tumbling from the tongue.
Syllables fall together lazily,
Gauze-covered vowels
Lay themselves out on display.
Words printed on rust-covered gates.
Gates that swing, and wail, and crack
Still.

Grief.
The effervescent hollow that holds them so.
The Laundries’ bigger belief.
Steam tugs, a double-crossed bow.
The floss of rot clings to the air.
It settles in the girl’s stomach.
Until the ribbon that laced itself around her hair
Resembles the twisted paths, the lines amok.
Sunlight remains in the cracked crescent of the courtyard.
The light pulls them in.
Fragile moths, piled in discard.
Flayed arms outstretched, tears in skin.
Devotion confused with impropriety.
Dust hangs from the skeleton of society.

The building had seen the lives filter past.
The whisper of prayer, tapers blown out.
Spires of the gate rising like a mast.
Confines echo censure, a religious drought.
Stakes of wood clinging to the walls,
Cross through the middle.
Stories long gone recall.
The rot of the plank whittles.
A perpetual hue of grey frames the imposition.
Silken clouds cling to the spires.
A decreed prescription.
They wait for the hue to expire.
But the memories lay tenant,
Sprawling with the Penitents.

Their names cling to the brick.
Sheets of dust formed in their shadow.
Their stories ironic.
The rooms whisper names back to the brick, hollow.
Rust-clad frames of shelter wallow in the corner
A shadow of a figure, a blend of age untellable to estimate,
Remains.
That’s what they will call her, the truth of the matter desolate.
The irons lay below, scald marks impenetrable on skin.
They lay now, tarnished and devoid.
Scars imposed brand them, a map of where they’ve been.
They scab and fade. Destroyed,
A breath echoes from the walls
The tangle of steam stalls.

The walls seep sweat-clad tears.
Catchment pooling into the light.
It stands. No one nears.
Fear no longer ignites.
But when the sun sets like this,
Light filtering through the willows,
Impossible to dismiss.
The Laundries and the women settle below.
Whispered prayers of thousands of girls
Settle into the soil,
Unanswered.
Nettles begin to spoil.
The incision of the matter remains
Tattooed on their hands, cheeks, tongue.
An eternal bound of chains.

II

“The Guillotine” – Martina Keogh: Institutionalised 1964 – 1966

“The earth, corrupt in the sight of God, was
violent. God looked onto earth
It was corrupt; for all flesh corrupted
their way upon the earth”

Genesis 6:11-22

The guillotine slide of shade.
A pandemonium of time.
Martha Keogh prayed.

Sixteen years.
Deaths repentance.
Thirty-nine thousand tears.
The print of the words has captured her attendance
McDermott was the street
The eye-level grille sliding
Thirteen white pupils, meeting her eyes, incomplete.
The garda relinquishing her, eyes residing.
The waxing light of the evening took a breath with her
In a pair of lonely arms, she crept.
The guillotine slides down, a spindle spur.
Arms turn to a pearl-dried bone,
Devouring wide-eyed innocence,
Subsided temperament.

The heart of the guillotine, the beat of it.
The hand of the higher power strikes.
The smell of grit.
The stench of skin alike.
Marks of labour-stained fingers
Spots of flesh remain, left to decay
No holy water could repent the naevus, it will linger.
The crime of gentleness a price too high to pay.
The lock struck with the guillotine,
The waxing evening welcomed the blow.
If a fire brew, unbeknownst to the heavy-handed machine,
It would blink, no remittance to owe.
The girls would sit in the flame,
Souls rotting just the same.

Martha retreated from the flame
Time surpassing the guillotine
She thinks of the forest, unheeded of blame.
She closes her eyes, with the snap of the machine.
A flutter.
Saplings tower, a shadow.
Hair turns to moss, rising with a shudder.
‘They’ve all forgotten about you’ the trees whisper, hollow.
The scald calls now.
Steam rising, wrapping itself around frosted dew.
Rusted frames creek, preparing for the plough.
When she blinks, she can see the soil where the tree grew.
The steam tangles itself in her skin
A trail of sin.

The guillotine glints in the wane of light.
A breath.
Two years leave stains.
Martha tears at them.
Beckoning their loss.
The word ‘penitent’ ingrained in every
Crevasse of her soul.
It blinks in the sun
Sinks in the moon.
It sharpens with the steel of the guillotine.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be
The guillotine holds repentance by the throat.
But this is how it is