Erzulie

First he said Eulalie . . .
Then Erzalie . . .
How hard is it to spell
Eruzulie?
. . . you must mean
Erzulie . . .
It’s like she wants
to keep you in the dark,
where she can be reached
in a pinch if all
the loas are not
too busy
and if a conjure woman
like your host Adore
would reach to her . . .

The spells are many, the grieving endless, the suffering always near at hand.
If the hand lifts the elbow falls and the wrist shakes and what do you hear but bones inside
the body’s walls, rafters and joists, beam and lattice.
Then the walls will bend as they did in the storm.
She looks like she’s praying when she conjures.
Her guest can’t see that she’s in touch with the one who scatters the foam of the air,
smooths the wrinkles in the earth beneath her floor,
spills what you can’t know if you’re nothing but human and beyond her touch,
spills it over the eyes of Adore
and there she is,
skin tight, eyes suns, tongue a fire, listening to what you believe you might be thinking
and telling you what she would like to do
to get rid of the ire whose ashes are all wrong for the wren in her nest of rye
with loons glistening and wreathing the world where the room is.
O who could fly through, who could pierce the skein wound around such patois?

(7 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander