by Kate Finegan

Sarah Grew, *Light as Time on Steel,* painting on steel, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

How to Swallow a Sword

Kate Finegan | SEPT 2023 | Issue 27

Listen to Pop when he says, "We could use a sword swallower." Let hope bloom in your ribcage, tendril-tangle your esophagus; hope he means the show could hire someone else to perform this fearsome act, so when he crosses the room to tip your head back and study your throat, as if reading curves and dents to augur your fate, you can't spit out the word no.

Ask him, out of curiosity—nothing more, save an irksome hangdog love for this man and his endless schemes—how one goes about swallowing a sword. When he speaks of butter knives and snakes, with their fangs filed flat, fixate on the fact that no one in the show has snakes. Never mind the desert's right outside, convince yourself all that's out there is rattlers, and those won't do. Forget whipsnake and the Western lyre, the kingsnake and red racer. Kick your constant yes, the one that would snatch a basking serpent bare-handed at Pop’s command, and send it skittering across the parched wild this traveling show traverses.

Ask whether Ned's ever thought of branching into this sharp art. After all, his act's already got a sword, you know too well, being the one who wipes it clean, who sharpens it against the whetstone and polishes his shoes with swish slap swish. Remember that time he asked you to shave him, and as the blade sleeked across his skin, you imagined slicing.

Ask why you have to have a talent. Used to be, it was enough to walk the crowd and sell. But it ain’t the same, selling at sixteen. Not cute now, no more gap-toothed smile. Men want their eyes cured of loneliness—a wink, a peek. You’re not a beauty.

Say if the idea is to get a snake, perhaps you could be a charmer.

Close your ears to couldn't charm a drowning horse to shore. Tell yourself Pop’s just worried over Hollywood, how it’s eating into profits; it ain't personal.

Remember the sword swallower at P.T. Barnum's, the strongmen and the sequin-glittering girls somersaulting onto horses’ backs mid-canter. Remember the human cannonballs, a team of two—mother, daughter. Remember there was a net to catch them.

When Pop brings you a butter knife, send him to fetch a spoon, then realize when he's gone how much wider that will be. Open your jaw far then further till it pops. Remember what you’ve learned about lemon caps from the girls who haunt the edges of the audience, whispering come-ons, how this body can fill to wrest some sense of safety from danger’s lingering kiss.

Pull out the harmonica. Play the first grave bars of Pearl Bryan’s murder ballad. Remember what you practiced—it's a dying girl's best wish not to struggle. When sliding a blade past all the vitals, it's important not to gag or swallow.

Relax.

Be the trapeze artist, in those moments of flight, when time is an empty plain, some far-off horizon, when all that holds true is the air, not the bar she flung herself from, nor the twin hoops her hands reach toward.

There is no tongue, no uvula. No larynx, pharynx, no valve standing guard at stomach, no curvature of gut; only lines as straight as train tracks.

Cough. Cough like you've swallowed sand.

Apologize. Listen when Pop says it's important you bite down on the metal.

Remember a storm can scoop you up at any time, no warning. That fate is in your blood.

Remember even dust can choke you.

Squint hard at this land until you see its honey hues.

After all, this land's a promise.

Tell your throat, your belly, what it wants to hear—that you'll survive this.

Tip your head back and slip the spoon over your tongue then wonder how, exactly, to bite down on something that is curved; you hadn't accounted for the bending.

Kate Finegan is a writer and editor exploring the interplay between stories and reality. She serves as novel/novella editor for Split/Lip Press, and her work is supported by Canada Council for the Arts, SK Arts, and Access Copyright Foundation. She lives on Treaty Six territory in Edmonton.

Sarah Grew creates art based in painting and photography, that expands into installation and environmental art and contracts into collage and printmaking. Her work includes a range from public art projects to wall based pieces belonging in private collections nationally and internationally. In researching the concepts that enrich her work she has become a beekeeper, studied native plant habitats, and worked as an Artist-in-Residence for a recycling facility in California. Recently, she was an artist in residence on a science research boat studying the effects of climate change on the plankton food web. Previously, Grew was awarded residencies at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Playa Artist Residency, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Joshua Tree National Park, the Collegeum Phaenomonologicum in Italy, Brush Creek and the Ucross Foundation. She has also received several support fellowships from The Ford Family Foundation. Currently, Grew is working on a several of time-bending projects; paintings that examine modes of expressing time through layering visual art technologies from different periods and concurrently, a photography project using early printing methods to speak to climate change and the fragility of our planet.