Las Brujitas
Bubble, bubble toil and double
Double dutch too much
Turning into trouble trouble
Tapping time ’til we just can’t
Take it. Chanting rhymes
when the moments make it.
Blessed/cursed being double
handed. Leaning to the left
strands deftly commanded
Understudies be understanding
as brujitas switch, be turnin’
Dispel, casting, breaking curses
Through portal dimensions
simple phrases making
mischief not to be phased as
bracelets clink in synch
wink: a be mine phrase
invoking through games:
“Tell me the name of your sweetheart”
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G”—”Miss Lucy had a baby
a baby, a baby, Miss Lucy had a baby—
and this is what she said! She said—”
“…went downtown to get a stick a butta…
saw James Brown sittin’ in the gutta…”
Even when Ali needed mo’ machismo,
He put the dopes on a rope, then a butterfly float
flippant wrists let loose the noose’s grip
like we girls did, reworking the kinetics
left turn, right turn, overhand aesthetics
feet thinking double time, meter reason
school’s in season, flipping, flouncing
guild lilies dust cloud breezes.
Ten little drummers summon up
those stories. Speak in tongues
old souls got the blues—and browns
round white fronts, tassles flat down.
Keeping up the chatter from the patter in the ‘pation
vibes ‘verberate teeny-bop intimidation.
Tensile strength makin’ a stand
Not still, we grand!
Significadence ain’t random,
we clasp our hands in tandem.
Hi Friends,
A self-taught poet out of the Nuyorican Poets Café scene, Tracie Morris competed in national slams and toured nationally in the early 1990s. She is now a graduate-level poetry professor and one of the foremost scholars researching and writing on spoken word and performance poetry.
Tracie Morris and the double dutch rhythms of her piece “Las Brujitas” are featured in the anthology Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (2007), edited by Alix Olson with a foreword by Eve Ensler.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen