Genine Hanns: poem

VOODOO MARY

Born on the swamplands of Louisiana
Voodoo Mary gained the gift
from her white witch mother
in their catfish hut down on the riverbank.
She learned the trance
the moon weaves you into
when you hold it in your palm like a crystal ball.
She learned the language of bones,
how they speak in ancestral tongues
as she scatters them on the earth.
Bones from the men of Xanadu
her mother keeps in a tarnished chest
she brought with her from Zanrafore
before she settled in cajun land.

Mary knows the feathers of birds,
how their touch makes words fly from her lips
in spells and incantations
as she sits in her gnarled raintree
in the middle of the carnival grounds.
She will make you a sleep stone for your restlessness,
plant coins under your mattress
to watch your money grow.
Knit you a death doll of your enemy
with handpicked lace and beads of blood.
Lay it in its stone coffin
with a knife in its navel
and stitch marks around its throat
where she drew out its spirit with a pin.

She brews incense darkly, gathers the forces,
sucks light from the stars.
her perfume of absinthe and honeysuckle
lingers long in your garden
after you have seen her.
She knows of the time
babies can be born, or bled,
when the rabbits and spring lambs are butchered
for the celebration offerings.
Her knots and witch locks
form a braclet of pain
around the wrist of your lover.
She'll stop him like a heart,
drain his luck,
then set a thousand pins
pricking in his head.

At your request
she'll paint you a hope stone
to keep with you for your spirit to grow.
It is the blue ether of violets.
She'll place it, for a blessing,
in the mouth of her three-legged dog
then set it, wetly glistening,
like a seed, into your palm
to plant at full noon under the ground,
and leave for three nights and days.

Into the brown hands of the earth you scoop it,
bury it over with words and prayers
while the ghosts of Xanadu field men
garden in the sun.