Original Medicine

suck the venom from the wound

and I would summon ancient gods

stories, my body craves

stories that only forests now can tell

all other bodies 

drained of the words

puncture wounds

conspicuous and silent

my grandmother says

I would have been a water witch

mutilated

my deeper forms

muted

my older prayers

mutated

my original medicine

in the caverns of my body

where the stories once lived

I etch deranged on the walls

    

                                                who will burn stephen miller at the stake?

alone with the language of rage and snakes

my grandmother says

I would have been a water witch