Melissa Prunty Kemp

My world swirls inside my wooly nodding head.  I watch the gleaming children jostle about like spring yearlings. I envy their equilibrium. Their bare feet, pale as new muslin, furrow the chickweed.  The sun swells the knot on my head. I am dizzy, remember the metal weight that ablegates me to shade or fainting if it’s above ninety-five.

 

In the spirit world, Mami Wata transmutes heat shimmers into her serpent necklace. I offer her trinkets—a brass button, a pearl chip from Massa’s hairbrush that Trixie smuggled out. Mami Wata will not drown me when I cross the Choptank River. She will fill my knot with healing waters.  Whirlpool sleeping sickness won’t engulf me.

 

My eyes are crystal balls. Smoke clears, reveals a four-room cabin on the edge of Auburn, New York, where I’ve never been. A dirt road leads through tree trunks and beaver dams,

under railroad ties and slaughterhouse wagons. Striped conductors extend their hands. A husband rings my left finger. Later I bare glistening children.