BURY



This morning I take a plastic spoon
to the beach to bury the medicine in the wet sand.
                                                                                   Medicine 
that I've kept under my pillow rather than swallowing—
blood of a rooster soaking a cotton-wrapped packet of eggplant and okra
charred down to its essence.  I'd carried the rooster and pigeon,
each in its own brown paper grocery bag, the kind 
you don't see much of anymore.  The woman at the bodega had stapled 
the tops, scissor-sliced an air-hole in each one.  The heavy rooster
wiggled in my left hand, the lighter pigeon flayed in my right.
Terror—mine and theirs—slid up each of my arms.
                                                                                         The bodega 
stunk like a zoo, like subway piss.  The religious statues—
Catholic saints wearing glittery mesh, a black baby Jesus 
in what appeared to be a doll's dress.  Don't look,
my friend said, when she saw my eyes pause on the cages
of baby goats.  I needed camphor tablets to melt in water 
to clear my mind.  CamFOR, I said to the owner, trying 
to sound like I could actually speak Spanish...Un gallo.
Una paloma.   The old woman nodded like it was nothing,
like I was ordering a burger and coke.  I put the rooster and pigeon 
into the trunk and my friend drove me to my second meeting
with the Babalowo, a priest I prayed could continue to help me.  
I also said a prayer for the rooster.  I could kill 
because this was war, war against evil spirits that I didn't believe in 
until now.  Evil spirits, for which the words "aggression"
and "mental illness" weren't adequate.  Evil spirits from my ex, 
his threats, his violence.  My middle-of-the night bolts of out bed, 
my heartbeat a frantic knocking to wake up me from dreams 
so bad I couldn't remember them.
                                                             The therapist thought 
the nightmares were my way of working out the divorce.
The chiropractor said, Middle of the night? It must be your liver, 
and he gave me some supplements.  But I wasn't able to really sleep  
until after my first trip to the Babalowo--the intricate altars, 
the beaded gourds, his backyard garden, the divination reading.  
I cupped two shells in my hands and shook.  
Then I held a cowry in each fist as he clicked 
the divining chain that looked to me part runes, part rosary.  I whispered 
my problem into my palms.  He wrote down the numbers 
he got from his god, Ifa, now my god, now our god.  He advised me 
to wear a red piece of thread around my wrist.  Kabbalah, 
I thought, but no—this was to signal the evil spirits that I was alive 
when I slept so that they would stop trying to take over my body. 
The red symbolized the blood in my veins.  The Babalawo said,
Now the spirits will know that you are drained, yes, 
but not dead.  The red string told the spirits I could fight back. 
The Babalowo blessed me
                                              as the rooster somersaulted in its bag 
and the pigeon skittered, the bag he was trapped in 
moving as though a belligerent ghost.  The Babalowo concentrated 
on the pattern of the cowry shells, half-singing the prayers 
with my name inserted in the right places.  Ifa said the pigeon 
could be spared.  The Babalowo took the rooster 
to my forehead and chest, where it flapped.  He took a glistening knife 
and the frantic wings to the back yard where I heard two gurgles, 
then silence. The Babalowo soaked the okra and eggplant 
in the rooster's blood.  He handed me the packet of medicine 
he'd wrapped in foil.  Don't show this to anyone. It's private.
He knew that, as I'd grown up Catholic, I might have found it 
exotic.  When my friend picked me up and said, Let's see, 
I told her no.  She was giddy and then solemn, like I was.  A believer 
in everything and nothing, in magic and hard work.  The blood 
left a stain on the underside of my pillowcase  
the same shape of the period stain on the mattress, which gave the rooster 
and me something in common.  
                                                          For three nights I slept like the princess 
on the pea, like Lisa Bonet, who was a Cosby kid one year, then 
a girl being chased down by the devil in Angel Heart the next.  I was terrified
in the movie theater all those years ago, but soon after 
became obsessed with the voodoo stores on Avenue D, where glass jars 
of herbs and roots lined the shelves.  I went in a few times to buy charms 
for good luck, charms for travel.  Mickey Rourke played Harry Angel 	
who was really Satan, though he didn't know it.
                                                                               I don't know 
if my ex knows if he is evil or not.  I don't know
if I am really that good.  Poor Denise, I think, meaning
Lisa Bonet, who played Denise Huxtable all those TV episodes 
only to meet such brutality in Angel Heart's twist ending.  Poor Denise, 
I think, meaning poor me.  I'd played a wife all those years, only to meet such brutality
in a little apartment by the sea.  
                                                      But I know I won't be poor forever.  
I know as I stab that plastic spoon into the sand, I'll make my own castle.
I know I'll be safe as I scoop out a mound of granules and bury 
the past for good, bury what the Babalowo calls the medicine,
that bundle of burnt hurt upon which I have slept, 
that bundle of burnt hurt, brittle with blood.