Kin: Poems

Ode of the Hoodoo Woman

Ode of the Hoodoo Woman I. If you let me lie I will sing you a Hoodoo Woman's Song. Loud. Fierce. Would make the drums of my voice the voice of your mother and hers lulling you into forgiveness Baby, Sugar, Sweetness. If you let me lie I will dance the dance of disease rampant and faceless. The dance of men who make babies and broken hearts Could make their weaknesses my rhythm. Let me cast you a spell, wish myself into your dreams, conjured; swinging these rounded hips, chanting some magic words, making myself not fat but plump; not cute but beautiful, perhaps even exotic. Let me brew a blaming stew a commercial stock my base. Let me chant until my throat grows hoarse. Let me cast myself out of this sin. Let me get down on dirtied knees. Let me pray. Let me call on DNA-my God and Antichrist. 70 II. There is no magic spell binding. No Hoodoo. Only my feet, wide and flat, hitting the ground, carrying me to work then home. No conjuring 'cept the songs of my father-jazzy-soft and the touches of mother-pulling on coats, tying on shoes, combing my hair into niceties. These are the only spells I know. Most days, the sun out or the douds tight and gnarled, here, not sexy, not slim, I stand. Peeling off the excess excuses like armor; peeling the tired/tried rhythms of fierceness; peeling, like a potato, until I am glistening and dammy. Not Hoodoo Woman. Not Mamma Woman. Not Strong Independent Woman. Not Too Much of aWoman. Only raw, small, and afraid. 71 III. Coda There is too much talk about the weather. For now, I will say it was my father's death coming like molasses from a jar: that winter for the first time a cold car, unshoveled snow. And it was my high school boyfriend who may have never learned being a man means not dumping your girlfriend on Prom eve. I could leave it with a list of names: Grump the Simple, or Leo the Gigolo, or Wil the Decimator, or Melvin or Michael or Anthony. Or I could change tracks: It was hugging Scott, his AIDS body slim and brittle, unlike his smile. I might say: Only children have a hard time learning compromise, the media is too :full of beauti:fully created women, the women's movement was before my time, the Black brown bruthas are locked up or straying or not accessible. 72 On good days, it is a culmination, a slow heaping on of reasons like dirty dishes or garbage dumps, that grows until it is repugnant and easily ignored. 73 ...