WHAT SORCERIES

I use
spirits. I like

to see
what flares up.

I goe in—
no question

or intention—
& I wait,

I let fire
flower

then consort
with its blue

flames,
its sooty wings.

 

 

 

DID YOU NEVER PRACTISE WITCHCRAFT IN YOUR OWNE COUNTRY

I apprentise to water
hurtling over dank rocks

to sudden gusts
& the leaves thay sweep skyward

like hundreds & hundreds of dry
hands clapping

I believ in swaying
cattails in July in evening

heat as it croons
hydrangea to dust

I come from silt & exposed
roots I practise mist

from the rapids
rising into pines

 

 

 

I HEARD LAST NIGHT A KIND OF THUNDRING

You speak of dunes,
& plovers

darting in & outt
of swooning

beach grass.
You speak of broken

shells & surf lashing
clay clifs.

I wade in. I am
nott afrayde of swells

that lift mee
off my feet,

or of a strong
undertow, or sea glass.

 

Author’s Note: These poems are inspired by the 1692 Salem witch trials. The titles come from court records, which have been collected and edited by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum in The Salem Witchcraft Papers (1977) and, more recently, by Bernard Rosenthal in Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (2009). The poems are also informed by Boyer and Nissenbaum’s Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974).