Description
Winner of the Fall 2016 Black River Chapbook Competition
In Reddy’s south Louisiana, gods, saints, and sibyls walk among us. Set against the approach and aftermath of a hurricane, Acadiana‘s swamps and bayous are liminal spaces where the boundaries between this world and the next, between comfort and catastrophe, are porous. In this sometimes lyrical and sometimes sinister polyvocal collection, the sibyls’ oracular voices foretell the approach of the storm and the disaster it leaves in its wake; before her death, the folk-saint Saint Charlene whispers her last invocation to the Lord she can no longer hear; a girl tells the story of being momentarily possessed by the Holy Spirit; and Saint Catherine sits in a lawn chair before a storm, reading the sky for signs: “The sky’s a still and cloudless blue / and tells us nothing. Only certain birds // can guide us. They do not appear.”
By placing the rituals of Catholic faith alongside ancient practices like augury and divination, these poems ask about the role of ritual and faith in warding off and making sense of disasters, both natural and man-made. The collection closes with the stark, oracular pronouncement of the sibyls, after the storm: “Saved and spared are different / and you will learn that now.”
SAINT CATHERINE TAKES THE AUSPICES
We’re out back in our lawn chairs under the carport
when the air drops and thins as before the storm
that’s said will break us. We divide the sky
into four regions and watch for signs.
As the red dog’s fur sends smoke skyward
to whatever gods may still watch over us,
I sprinkle holy water along the fence posts, place
the blessed palms along the shuttered windows
and above the doorframes. I make of matches a cross
and light them quick to stop the rain.
The sky’s a still and cloudless blue
and tells us nothing. Only certain birds
can guide us. They do not appear.
© Nicole Graziano 
