Voodoo Made Us

Gianfranco Fernandez-Ruiz

A culture without a nation
once said, You don’t know what it is
to see blood until it is dark like eggplant.

In the Atlantic sea,
a crash on the doldrums.

They would call it a tossing of wood
at the trial of Zong when—
beneath the bunks, whipped like custard,
broken men, skin shred like coconut meat,
beat bone-bare to egg whites;
This is before the trial.

Opportunity fell on black lips
and never had so many syllables 
been caught between Black God’s teeth
            He did not know what to do with it.
            And they kept down.

Similarly, Captain Collingwood’s men
learned the term oppression; it stumbled out 
from their mouths and killed ten dead.

The cat made them dog.

Black God watched them sink
White God watched them die
There at sea bottom
where prayers learned to swim:
unborn children mix clay and eggplant blood. 

You will call it Diaspora.
I call it voodoo.

Gianfranco Fernandez-Ruiz often echoes paralleling themes of self-discovery and the immigrant experience. Capturing the passers-by seen in Boston's inner-city to write characters with heart, who fail all the same, but show courage enough. Their verve and rhythm gives them walk and talk that mixes tribal beats from the Dominican-native, two-sided, tambora drum and the urban percussions of 90s boom bap. @notitalianGianfranco