Doris G. Eibl, Dr., is assistent professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She has widely published on a variety of 20th and 21st century authors and presently works on surrealist women writers and painters who emigrated to Mexico during Word War II.
510 St. Philip, morning haze, volcanos
on the sidewalks, everywhere
coarse upheavals of roots and more of that.
One-Eyed Jacks say, waste not,
desperately clinging to Half-Hanged Mary’s
want not, while the rapper hoists the trash bags
onto the black pickup.
The casquette girls scurry up and down the chimney,
twittering, chatting, giggling, cursing, they go
prancing about my dreams. It’s not chimney swifts in
533 Dumaine, dump heat, geysers
pouring their hearts out of the ceiling, everywhere.
Let’s feast and drum on the pelican’s wing, they chant,
hurricaning in the kitchen.
In the morning, as I knock on Mimi’s door,
the yellow light wildly zigzags between dried fluorescent paint drips.
She stirs the cauldron and says, you are late.
Ribbons, prayer books and some leftovers added to a creole roux,
air conditioning orphans, prostitutes, vampires, and tourists.
1418 Governor Nicholls, stiff gusts of wind. It’s January 20th
and the water in the dog’s bowl is frozen.
Mel says, Rajae’s body is her spoken words,
runaways hanged in the Place d’Armes, all over again.
She has three peppers in her mouth, infusing them with her intentions,
but Li Grand Zombi fossilizes on her lap. Her tattooed junkie mother
disappeared in one big slurp and Rajae’s very old now.
Look at them, they are of a different breed, a voice spreads through the
962 St. Charles Streetcar, only a thought away from here.
And then the Glitter Box witches ride in on their bikes.
1109 Royal, brides of the wind, bangles chinking, laughing and snorting
they scrape the asphalt with their heels. Blue herons
circle over their fancy feathered hats and red foxes lick water from their palms.
A fifth-generation Marie Laveau scrolls through sentences like
Meschiya Lake singing Satan your kingdom must come down at Jazz Fest.
Could you do this French poem again?
Gris-gris and golden spectacle frames cure bad spells.
Morgan knows the new ways, nailing eyes down
while they knit, practice yoga, and comment on a TV series.
They sell vintage panties betraying Victoria’s secret vows. At
1314 Napoleon, there’s a Frida Kahlo shrine, too.
You need to soak in acetone before you can go white, she says
and shows me seven different shades.
The Hermit, the Fool, the Page of Swords,
the Knight of Swords, Mimi sighs inadvertently.
1033 Henriette Delille, with all that green prickling through
my summer dress. Andalusia is over there,
but she cuts her nails all the same to play the castanets.
You better find Dr. John as long as we know
what we are not talking about.
Pour citer cette page
Doris Eibl, « The Glitter Box Witches », MuseMedusa, no 5, 2017, <> (Page consultée le ).
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