Gris-gris

Gris-gris

Rising with the night wind, 

Legba’s misused servant sculls her insubstantial boat

across the jagged template of the swamp 

looking for a sign, a water mark of Li Grand Zombi,

His serpent Self fat with knowledge

she must borrow, somewhere in the black night.

The humming song on her peach lips

is deep with the umber pulse of Africa,

in a language no one knows here. It

builds magic out of bondage, grows charms

from fear and want, weapons from shed blood

that turn against the holding hand.

The gris-gris sack around her neck

ties the struggling spirit to her body

for the will to fight is strongest after all;

it chills the child away from her womb,

the child she can’t keep or bring herself 

to give her master

no matter how often he comes 

like a levee breaking in the muddy dark,

hard fingers prying her open like a mussel,

her wide mouth thin as a knifepoint,

tongue tied tight as a noose.

It’s not easy to get what she needs

here in this mad confining place, but

what the heart desires long enough,

strong enough the body will do.

So she finds it all, here and there, from

the rummy sailors off the ships stinking of death,

or from the altar boy she bribes with her breasts

for stolen pieces of the holy wafer.

She mashes the small bones of a lizard

caught by a seventh son 

in a graveyard 

under a full moon

and all the other secret things, 

each one 

just 

so

and stirs them together 

with a broken crucifix

as she chants 

the Lord’s prayer

and older prayers in her honey voice,

calling the spirits,

so much closer to her

than the white face of God,

so much more likely to care.

She croons to the Snake of heaven and earth

softly like a lover and

under her bed she puts her careful curse

perfect in a bag slung round the neck

of the soft doll with the lock

of yellow hair.

On that black night of endless nights,

blowing into the hut like a lost storm,

the master is surprised and pleased

to see for the first time

she is smiling 

really smiling at him.

February 2011

 Posted for OneShotWednesday  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry 

Image: Another Thorny Crown, painting by Margaret Bowland