By Lyric Hoover

Ghosts of the Bayou

Sometimes the ghosts of the bayou whisper to me 

on those lonely nights when the wind carries its secrets from door to door 

and the trees rattle their branches in warning

and the drooping skeins of the weeping willow resemble nothing so much as necklaces of rope meant to stifle, to suppress, to subdue

that soft susurrus I hear now

My mama says that’s just the devil talking

lurking, hiding, waiting in night’s velvety black disguise

to seize wicked children in his cold fingers

Ain’t that the truth, says my grandma

as her fingers work nimbly in the dense cloud of my hair,

prisoning those downy tendrils in braided coils

and curlicues of baby hair fragrant with Blue Magic hair grease and Miss Jessie’s Pillow Soft Curls and Jamaican black castor oil

like they might just be blown away if she didn’t braid them tight enough to stifle, to suppress, to subdue that ghost-voice insinuating its way into my head

See, mama and grandma think they know every damn thing and then some

but even grandma’s braids aren’t tight enough to keep the ghosts away

They call to me, speaking in a hundred, a thousand, no, a million tones

I hear them in the soughing of the weeds on the bank of the bayou

a whispered enticement disguised as a plea

one that I cannot ignore, cannot deny

one that lures me down to the bayou on the last Sunday of each month, 

when the ghosts are strongest and ever more lonely for it

to watch them as one watches the long-legged water spiders and mosquitoes skimming lazily to and fro

I see them sheltering beneath the low-hanging branches of the willow tree

phantasmal wisps of shadow, mirages only visible when seen out of the corner of your eye

as they join with the cruel wind, unseen spirits of forgotten pasts

those furtive intruders that make their homes in the sparse swampgrass

I see them in the telltale roil of air stirred up by their passage

in the fleeting imprints of invisible feet on the muddied riverbed

I feel them in the unforgiving glare of the Louisiana sun, 

burning my skin with curious fire-fingered hands 

in the languid sort of malaise that steals over me in increments

torpefying my limbs, lulling them into a state of false comfort till they hang lax at my sides

easy prey for the alligators I see sunning themselves on the waterlogged banks

kept company by the silent sentinels cloaked in white that are the herons;

not so innocent, after all

I listen and watch until I can no longer be sure that I am not merely one more of these ghosts

forever relegated to that liminal space between life and death.

The Dancing Girls 

We dancing girls claim the righteous rosy night as our own

Roving sleek-skinned and fey amongst unsuspecting paladins, those noble guardians of Nyx’s fragile honor

Of that Stygian virtue which occludes all within its immutable reach.

We are intruders in their circumspect midst, we dancing girls

Savoring the viscosity of that mellow quietude, so alien and yet so alluring to us, 

Flicking out our tongues to taste the earthy stagnance of rotted wood, mossed all over, 

Ivy clinging with plaintive limbs to the gnarled trunk.

And still we cannot seem to subsume, to conquer, the tendriled essence that lives out its dying breaths in the air all around us

Floats in lone motes just beyond our omniscient eye

Without it we are empty, we dancing girls, 

Bereft of our souls, withering away before your eyes

Till only the desiccated husks remain,

Caught up like dead leaves in a last whirlwind before we begin to decompose into the fertile soil.

Nothing girls, lonely girls, empty girls

Prototypes of womanhood, grisly studies in femininity made in warped image

Molded from dead women, their flesh scalpelled free before the encroaching decay

To form these hollow vessels that spin their merry way down the sidewalk, 

Tap their feet in their pointy kitten heels in tune with the knell of that eternal dirge,

Our facsimile of a heartbeat, beating its dissatisfaction against the bars of its living prison

Echoing past bone, flesh & sinew

Through the veins of our own intertwined dreams

Till we dance ourselves out of mind

Into madness.

Elegy for the Crapemyrtle Tree 

the grass nearest the crapemyrtle tree is hopelessly tangled, 

a morass of brittle green stalks snarled together above the reluctant soil. 

meanwhile the pinkened stems and unfurled buds of the pokeweed hide their heads low in the crowd of their lesser brethren, 

weed mingling with late-fruited seed

sprouting like tiny, insectile limbs, suspended from translucent wing.

see the lovely red debris left by the holly berries, crushed into such carnage under the careless tread of the starlings and red-breasted robins

violent crimson in imperfect stain across what has just been sown: 

the starved roots of the crapemyrtle, intertwined in loveless union

beneath the poor soil, watered by the blood of its fellows

not fruitful for how could it be.

the sullied trail weaves its way to the lonely crapemyrtle 

which wears its dwindling pride in the swags of lush pink flowering from its arms, knobbed like spurs of bone,

up the gnarled trunk, muddying the warp of its weathered bark & the weft of its beard of skeined Spanish moss.

to follow this path, watch the scarlet footprints it leaves in its wake, emblems of bloody triumph worn in aged wood.

in succession there will come the newly conquered blue of the sky,

Horizon deigning to bend its proud head, to extend its regal hand for the crapemyrtle to kiss,

a wizened knight before his liege.

Listening to Fear 

When I say that I am afraid they do not listen

I say that I feel the sun turning its watchful eye on my back, 

Helios gazing down from above, a brand against my skin, a reminder of my own mortality

First a pleasant warmth but threatening at any moment to become a raging inferno, to scald my flesh from my bones

To make me envy the ants, smarter than I, knowing as they do to stay hidden low to the ground

But they do not listen

I say that I feel I am a sailor lost at sea, alone, adrift, unprotected from the seething waves

That thrash me to and fro like a ragdoll

Till I succumb to the merciless, wind-whipped lash of the water

as the wood of the boat rots, decays, crumbles away under my feet

Saltwater eroding away not only at the wood but also at my courage, my will

Seeping in through the cracks in the floor, the cracks in my fortitude

But they do not listen

I say that I am forever trapped on a circuitous path

One that leads me deep into the abyss of the woods

That shadowed, ominous mass of trees, thickets rife with prickly brambles, stinging nettles

corralling me onward as on a hero’s journey

But I am not a hero of old, not brave, not strong, not fearsome

And I tell them that I cannot continue on this path

But they do not listen

Do not hear

Nor do they listen when I tell them of the saplings budding up from the ground in my front yard

Grown from bloodstained memories, steeped in a soup of shame and misery

From such miserable seed only the most vile fruit could be reaped:

Crouching, stunted shrubs clinging stubbornly to the ground like parasites to their hosts

thorned bushes hung with garlands of poisonous berries

keeping company with creeping, serpentine vines that drape themselves in languid loops and coils over the skeletal, leafless trees

I tell them all this and they do not listen, do not care to hear

They doubt my sanity, that slippery elusive thing, always just out of reach.

For sanity is in their eyes blind belief in what is real and tangible and ignoring all else

And perhaps they have the right of it

For certainly they sleep easy if not undisturbed

Not like I, with my skin weathered by the fury of the windswept sea, blistered by the burning gaze of the sun, abraded by the prick of thorns

I who live in constant fear of my own mind

I who am forever afraid, and if not afraid then lonely, and if not lonely then static

So I no longer speak

Because I know they will not listen, will not hear.

Teenage Blues

Sometimes the blues carry me away

A body inert, spread-eagled in weary-eyed somnolence 

Kept just above the greedy maw of the swelling tear-flecked tide

Which sends its sly rivulets to lap at my toes and nip at my fingers

To drown me, spreading like a newborn’s caul over my lips and nose

Runny as it seeps into the hollows of my body

Yet viscous where it gathers atop my skin in scummed layers of color

First the dark gloam of indigo, deepening into the fierce green-blue of sea glass washed ashore

Next the rheumy blue of an old man’s eyes, former vibrancy underlaid with the fog of age

Entrapping me in a familiar torpor, a deadened sort of complacency, malaise of my own making

That to escape I must willingly sink below the yet rippled surface

Submerge my dead and dying remains in the frigid well of the blues, 

Those weltering waters fed by the tears of the firmament

My blues, your blues, our teenage blues.

The Poet's Soul

underlaid beneath the rich brown of her skin intertwines fragile bone & sinew

a latticework of halted thought fleshed through with pain

an emotive psyche that can be seen in the premature lines graven around her mouth

in that permanent furrow of a forehead given to deep consideration of the world and its patchwork beauty

in the elegant streamline of her ink-stained fingers, flowing across the paper like gouache

physically small, she dominates in breadth of will and red-blooded American spirit 

endowed with the gift of genesis by palsied hands

liver-spotted and wrinkled all over like the skin of a prune

which bestow the poet’s soul in drapery over its beloved proprietress

setting her bound limbs free of their phantom agonies.