Father Duffy looked up. You don't understand. The 30th Gospel talks about

this podcast in this place at this time. It describes it as terrifying,

driving mad those who inherit. We have to warn them.

Sudapod, episode 718, August 21st, 2020.

This week's story, Tara's Mother's Skin by Susan Palumbo.

Hey everyone, welcome to Pseudopod. I'm Alistair, your host, and this week's story is a

Pseudopod original. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Susan Palumbo is a writer, editor and teacher based in Toronto

Canada. Susan uses her writing to explore the intersectional nature of

identity, sexuality, race, and power and the liminal space created by Cultural Fusion.

Her work is also greatly influenced by the natural world and her love of the forest.

She has been published most recently by Fireside Fiction magazine and Podcastal.

You can find links to all her stories at her website.

Your reader for this week is Arielle John. Celebrating the West Indian now while designing

our survival of the future, Arielle approaches poetry and

theatre performance as medicine for Atlantic peoples, their resilient cultures and the land

and sea they occupy. Her devotion to community building work centers on transformative justice,

sustainable living, and the healing arts, working within the Caribbean and its diaspora.

So, without further ado, they have a story for you, and I promise you, it's true. Tare's's's mother's skin by Susan Palumbo, read by Ariel John.

You eat the rice you pick out of the dirt,

I asked Tara's mother. I'd found her sitting on a wooden bench in the gallery of her squat, concrete house, massaging her inflamed elbow.

The heat had been a noose at our throats that day, and she was enjoying the late afternoon breeze, a serene expression displayed across her

brow. She swayed like a dried banana leaf, twisted and weightless, framed by her doorway as I stood

...