Wednesday 17 September 2014

Obeah Mama Dot



(her remedies)

I

I am knotted in pain.
She measures string
From navel to each nipple.

She kneads into my belly
Driving the devil
Out of my enforced fast.

II

For the fevers to subside,
I must drink the bush
Boiled to a green alluvium,

In one headlock slake;
And return to bounding around,
Side-stepping bushes for days.

III

A head-knock mushrooms
Into a bold, bald,
softened bulb.

Her poultice filled
At the end of a rainbow -
The sun above Kilimanjaro;

The murderous vial drawn,
Till the watery mound
Is a crater in burnt ground.

IV

Our rocking-chair counsellor:
Her words untangling us
from bramble and plimpler notions

Into this sudden miles-clearing.

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