Gris-Gris, Revisited

© Margaret Bowland

Gris-gris

(Revised August 2012)

Rising with the night wind, 

Legba’s misused servant sculls her makeshift 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 from 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 resist 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

sharp teeth seeking

her wide mouth thin as a knifepoint,

tongue tied tight as a noose.

In time she finds it all, here and there, from

rummy sailors off ships stinking death,

from altar boys bribed with her breasts.

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

stirs them together 

with a broken crucifix

to the singsong mantra of

the Lord’s prayer

and older prayers in her honey voice, calling

the spirits of air, crooning to the Snake of

heaven and earth, arched as a lover.

Under her bed the curse breathes, newborn in a bag

slung round the neck of the vacant doll

with the lock of yellow hair.

On that black night of endless nights,

blowing into the hut with the rush of storm,

the master is surprised and pleased

to see for the first time

she is smiling 

really smiling at him.

~February 2011

(revised August , 2012)

 

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Process Notes: I originally had something else in mind for tonight, but recent political events in this country brought this old poem to mind, full as it is with the issues of absolute ownership and power over women's bodies, what people will do to each other when they can, and voodoo as science.

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, with apologies for sound quality, click below: 

gris-gris by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Image: Another Thorny Crown, painting by Margaret Bowland

All copyright remains with the artist. The picture is reproduced here for non-commercial purposes only, for sake of the art, and with all respect to the creator. If there is any objection by the copyright holder to this use of the work, please contact me via email (see profile link) and it will be withdrawn immediately with full apologies.

Zombie

Zombie

Excerpts from the Journal

 July 2, 1995

...but telegrams from ghosts are unnerving...hard to somehow extract the essence [of the past] without ever wanting it back..

I shed bitter tears for ____ at the funeral Friday, went back to work, came home to crash, woke to screaming nightmares of his corpse pulling me up by the hair ...

mourning for the flame that burned so fitfully but so pure; I go in fear of the black hand that extinguished it….

After I ran away I dreamed

and dreamed of you dead

and now you are
buried in your overalls

laughing brown eyes blanks, rolled up in your head

ivory as  unnumbered dice

the way the whiskey always made them

so dead for you is just another high... 

July 5, 1995

Nearly a year on my new job. Slept too much. Crazy dreams. 

of ______ once again, this time wearing another’s body, but retaining his own insane unfocused brown eyes, ranting at me, holding me by the shirt and shaking me, starting with 

soft words, words that my new lover says to me, 

[‘It will be better, it will all be better soon’]

but always that mad look increasing as I start to know, finally screaming at me;

what, I can’t tell, 

because I too am screaming...denials, guttural cries of child's terror...is it his unforgiving ghost, coming to me in dreams, to finally show what was bleeding and real under the plastic wedding cake cover...

or guilt's last hidden gasp.

...the old dreams from when I left him, that I must fight his corpse--fattened in the otherworld, malignant and mad with unholy life...

now I dream it all again, the headstone so uneasy on the man I knew, careless kind, silly, ineffective, weak and

 [full of the ability to destroy.]

what I feel I deserved to receive / 

or what I actually / behind the masks / received…

 

it’s all too far gone from me now... 

it's always sleeping beside me now

where I'm afraid I'll have to look at it,

don't make me touch it

turning turning in a winding sheet of

strangling nights

blind afraid 

to look and see that those empty eyes 

[there in the dark]

 are staring back and I'm caught again

as of course they always are, and I always am….

Journal entries from 1995, revised and extensively messed with, March 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Poet Stu McPherson is running the show at the pub today, and his prompt is to explore the nightmare edge of our dreams. This is a bit of a departure for me, more prose than poetry, and taken from life ( or more accurately, death.) I've redacted names

July 5 1995

Images © joy ann jones

Piquée

Piquée

There’s a little grey snake most cunningly faced,

curled up in cleaved breasts, well hidden in lace.

It’s only as long as a tailgunner’s song

only as thick as a Semtex stick

but it bites to the raw with a jaguar’s jaw

then tucks its head down and keeps drilling.

Sometimes it slithers outside on warm fingers

disarming observers with its plastic display.

Others the poison tongue drips out and lingers

soaks through the lace in a green disarray

to the sponge in the core

that echo'd reservoir

the little grey snake’s slowly filling.

February 2012



Posted for   real toads
Open Link Monday

Images: Photos of Femme Piquée par un Serpent (Woman Bitten by a Snake)
1847Auguste Clésinger (1814 -1883)Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France  by fmpgoh on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

The Moonwitch

The Moonwitch

How many years have I played this flute

under the green autumn moon, 

a cry so plangent
so forlorn the stars
birthed the winter wind to

freeze their tears?

How many times have the

paralyzed trees watched my snakes

uncurl, branch of their branches, my

wicked unwinding scarlet spells,

my blistered pentagram of bones?

How often has the black demon 

come to do my bidding and

left it all still undone

tho we both know 

I paid?

Vous doux, 

you, the sweet

the center safe 

between the lines

edges wild and ripped,

Voodoo I can’t put down,

swaying chant, burning blood

sharp sharpest black flint knife at

hope’s white throat

bleeding.

September 2011 


Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

also

Posted for    Magpie Tales #83 



( If you've already read this one, I also have a new one up here. )

Image: The Snake Charmer, by Henri Rousseau, 1907

courtesy Magpie Tales

This work is in the public domain.

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