She will run the whole way
this time.
When the sea voices tell her to—
chanting shanties,
mouthing driftwood, barracoon songs –
she will run
the whole way
to the breakers.
She will leap the sea wall
when the voices tell her to,
the ankle bangles clanking
against mosquito-worn flesh.
She could tell you their whole
story if you cared to hear –
if the voices demanded that
she’d recite their names
and explain them across
the breaking tide,
and breaking time,
and the clank of bangles she
found one morning
lost in the cursed sands
of the Outer Banks.
They had staved off tarnish and time,
ever-gleaming young,
carrying the captive magic
from the womb of a middle-passage ship.
She wore them as art –
sensuous and hip –
against the flesh-and-bone of her leg.
Now, she must sing the songs
of the ballast people,
their voices keeping time
in her head as she runs
towards the crashing waves,
the sea wall’s wide-spread arms
and the oncoming tide.
E. Doyle-Gillespie
Poet E. Doyle-Gillespie of USA was the grand-prize winner of the 2024 Iridescence Award. He works in law enforcement and enjoys literature, martial arts, travel, and fitness. He
aspires to be an established voice in the international literary world, sparking important discussions through his creations.
On Maggie,
Turned Revenant
Resurrected,
this time by a
creole conjure woman’s
muttered oath,
she came shuffling up
from the hollow
where they buried her
facedown.
She found the old plantation,
again, gone for good.
Grown over, hanging sad
with Spanish moss,
and weeping its paint chips
into a Gulf breeze,
it welcomed her back.
It moaned as her ragged
feet, now unbound,
tested its dry, wooden floors.
This sojourn home,
she wanted to see what was left
of the kitchen,
and the pantry,
and the parlor,
and the study
where he would have her arch
her body over his books,
and their angry, white magic.
She went up from the hollow
to see what was left
in the empty skull of
the broken, big house,
remembering
she could now go up
the wide front steps,
touch the pillars
for a moment more, and,
when she was ready,
walk through the front door.
​
More poetry of E. Doyle-Gillespie will be available in the upcoming Iridescence anthology. Pre-order today.