Fetish: Our Lady of Regla Church, Cuba
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- FetishOur Lady of Regla Church, Cuba
Beneath the sweetsop light of stained glass, an Eleggua, its head a smoked gourd carved with crosses that sprout capillary roots, inlays of cowrie shell for eyes, nose, & mouth, a long tail coiling into a rosary of tamarind seeds.
Were guinea fowl sacrificed among seagrapes on the breakwater? Was goat’s blood stirred with molasses in coconut crania? Who keeps vigil so the red votive light does not die or ants plunder the thimble of sugar?
Whoever laid you so near the altar did not fear destruction. Aren’t priests supposed to crush you with hobnailed heels or the gentler sacristan sweep you out to sea with a Palm Sunday broom?
Blessèd squatter, gorgeous stowaway from the Bight of Benin, I crave to take you home where snow & hail fall from brittle clouds that phosphoresce the night sky. Don’t fear. Snow is coconut flakes, hail rock candy. I will paint gouache jungles with aquatint vines, ocher ceibas, orchids that grow [End Page 1004] in gessoed moonlight, your lair of Spanish moss by a bay window where you will eat red papaya, drink rum, sun like an iguana on a yagruma tree. [End Page 1005]
Orlando Ricardo Menes, a 2009 recipient of a literature fellowship from the NEA, is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Notre Dame. His poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, West Branch, Crab Orchard Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review.
