Marie Laveau Talks about Magic

Marie Laveau, a colored woman who eventually became known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, often used her knowledge of Voodoo to manipulate and acquire power. –Enigma

In one quick lick I waved my mojo hand,
made the Mississippi’s muddy spine
run crooked as a crow’s foot,
scared politicians into my pocket
with lizard tongues and buzzard bones,
convinced the governor to sing my name
under a sharp crescent moon
white as a gator’s tooth.

Now my magic got the whole Vieux Carré
waltzing with redfish and rooster heads,
got Protestants blessing okra and cayenne,
Catholics chasing black cats down Dumaine,
even got Creoles two-stepping with pythons
along the banks of Bayou St. John.

They say soon my powers gonna fade,
that there’s a noose aloose in the streets
looking for a neck to blame.
But I’m just a lowly colored woman
and ain’t nobody gonna blame a worm
for scaring a catfish onto a hook.

–originally published in Spoon River

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The Birth of Night

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. -Genesis 1: 2

When the earth was merely a lump of phlegm
sticky in the hollow of God’s throat,
silence wheezed and I was born,
dark and clean, a black breath sucked deep
from an empty space in his lung.

It was I who swallowed the sun,
who woke before the orange-red blush
ripened in the leaves of trees
where fruit hung heavy-
I who carved the edges of the moon,
who sharpened stars like teeth.

Gloriously divided from light,
I was the world’s one dark element,
long before the shape of Man
blinked in a red puff of clay
and Eve’s pale-fisted body squirmed
in the bony womb of Adam’s rib.

–originally published in Prairie Schooner

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The Spirit of Bridget Bishop

Bridget Bishop was the first person convicted of witchcraft in Salem. Suspicion initially arose after someone claimed to have seen her spirit in the rafters of the Putnam barn. She was executed by hanging on June 10, 1692. –Life and Times of Bridget Bishop

I was born in the dark
corner of a barn, conceived
in a drop of sheep’s milk,
squeezed into this bitter world
by a farmer’s callused hand.

Most mornings I rise like steam
from the muscled backs of horses.
In the afternoon I’m dust
settling on floorboards,
a twitch in a cow’s neck.

All day I drift in the dusty
light of the hayloft,
forever in a blue halo of flies,
high above the cows
with their agnostic eyes
and the heretical black map
of their backs, the pigs
shinning like pink buddhas.

It’s only a matter of time
before my voice scurries
along the rafters of the barn,
before gossip flutters
in the branches of trees
and the word witch ripens
in townspeople’s mouths.

–originally published in New Delta Review