Voodoo Wall 
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Voodoo Wall, the wind blows on dried chicken bones making a strange hollow rhythmic sound.  A powerful priestess lives here, tending to the voodoo wall where the voices of ancestors are strong today.  Gris gris bags and other charms sold in the open market to ward off the evil spirits haunting the French Quarter. Haitian born, the language she speaks can only be defined by who understands the Vodun from the Gold Coast before the crossing. 

They would scatter.  They would hide.  But once the snare was set there was no escaping.  Chains and shackles became their tickets to the Americas. Whips washed the land with their blood.   These things she hangs do not come from the world of the supernatural, they are all objects of this world that represent some part of a life that has been weighed down by burdens.  The gods’ faces are dark, their eyes are wide, probing, their smiles are those who have seen our souls and are amused by what they have seen. We fear that which we do not know.  Her magic is no more powerful than our own imaginations where the blanks and empty spaces are filled in by magic.

I can see her standing at her wall, her feet bare as she prays to the gods that come from another land far across the sea. In our waking hours we walk the walk of the voodoo, between dreams and reality.  Listening to the dried chicken bones that rattle us from our slumber. 

Is that who we are, how we chose to be or has our existence depended upon the perception of others?  I hear her chant.  I see her body as it is claimed by Papa Legba, her dance pays homage to him. Her body is the temple she has built for him. Her voodoo wall proclaims all that she has offered to him.