LACE PENTAGRAMS by Gabrielle Langley

In this dark but brilliant poem a granddaughter rejects the esoteric magnetism of family tradition to create her own path.

 

 

 

Lace Pentagrams

You exhume the ancient witchcraft

of your wedding gown

and hold its decaying fabric up to me,

checking it for size.

 

It was white

at some point…

Now stained yellow

with the ichor

of your long-lost virginity.

 

In this haunted weave

you were my grandfather’s bride

and made him a eunuch

with the blade of your sharpened tongue,

licking up his riches.

 

While this rotting lace watched

from the closet of a blackened bedroom,

you conceived your children

to be smothered

and pressed their skins like parchment

between the pages of your wealthy widow’s bankbook.

 

I see how the yellowed seams began to split

as your breasts have grown

more pendulous each year

with the congestion of soured milk.

 

Your curdling voice preens

a witch’s dance into my ear.

One gnarled hand wields the bridal sheath

while the other points to me,

cackling an incantation: “You will be next.”

“You will be next.”

 

But I recoil

from your embroidered spell

of lace pentagrams.

I did not inherit the frame

to wear your malignant wedding drape,

nor castrating tongue,

nor smothering bosom,

and no cabalistic seamstress

will ever alter your ghostly vision for me.

 

Gabrielle Langley has been featured in the Huffington Post as one of Houston’s important emerging poets. She was Houston Poetry Fest’s Featured Poet for 2017, and a recipient of the Lorene Pouncey Award,  Vivian Nellis Memorial Award for Creative Writing, and an ARTlines national poetry finalist. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals. Ms. Langley is also a founder and editor of Red Sky: poetry on the global epidemic of violence against women (Sable Books – 2016). She works during the day as a licensed mental health professional. To safeguard her own mental health, she writes poetry and dances Argentine tango at night.