Special Issue:
Women & Voodoo
August '08

Original Poetry

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Voodoo Special Issue Home

August 2008

Yemaya * (meditation on water)

she lives in a forest of blue

beneath sunlight and stars

she wanders between oceans

and time and wayward

serpents chanting.

Erzulie: The Journey

Beginnings…

to the Caribbean you came,
a dutiful spirit in the belly of a ship
carrying its black gold to the shores of
new world disorder

you were the song in their
mouths, a whispered prayer
you kept rhythm with their chain linked
limbs memory of love dance birth and

sweet things with you heaven was on
earth and the earth moved
bowed to the thickness and
blackness of you, the mama of all things

beautiful.

The Atlantic…

you birthed babies on slave ships
blessed the wombs of women torn
apart by men who forgot they were
men and they women your arms
clung to the children thrown over
board babies never to see cotton
tobacco , rum, Agwe, your love,
received them baptizing the discarded
ones into a watery grave of freedom.

War…

and you stood with papa gu
as your babes from congo togo
benin ibo land joined as one
mighty fist at the site of fire in your
eyes french blood stained the
fields the price of black liberation
spun on the edge of hoe and machete.

Rebirth

you spoke french in the new land
the skin that housed your bones
fused the face of slave and slave
master you adapted
like your children surviving
between the rhythms of france
spain and turtle island
with flowers at your feet
you danced congo and
guinea land into the soil
into the roots into the mambo
into the priest into the church
into the pierced heart of those
who would remember you

defiantly sacred.

Kia Hayes is a writer and artist currently living in Japan. She has received literature and writing degrees from San Francisco State University and Swarthmore College. Originally from Philadelphia, PA, Kia is currently exploring the world and the realm of artistic abundance one country, one city, one community at a time with a pen and paintbrush in hand. Her current projects include an examination of modern haiku literature and Zen inspired art.

See more of Kia's poetry here.