MoMA

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P.S.1 Newspaper

2008 Fall

NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith

Neo-HooDoo is a litany seeking its text
Neo-HooDoo is a Dance and Music closing in on its words
Neo-HooDoo is a Church finding its lyrics.

—Ishmael Reed, Neo-HooDoo Manifesto

According to Ishmael Reed’s initial description of NeoHooDoo, it is the diverse practitioners responding to one another that engender NeoHooDoo. Likewise, in his poetry, Quincy Troupe refers to artworks in the exhibition, such as David Hammons’ Untitled and Jimmie Durham’s Anti-Brancusi, to define the alchemy of voodoo transformed to NeoHooDoo in the new world. Central among this upheaval and transition is text, the words that speak and sing the spirit of NeoHooDoo. To explore the literature that informs NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, P.S.1 has collected poems, some published here for the first time, from contemporary writers. With the help of Steve Cannon, founder of A Gathering of the Tribes, and Bob Holman of the Bowery Poetry Club, these poems give an additional point of entry to the exhibition’s consideration of art as a ritual and spiritual practice, in this instance in the realm of writing.

*     *     *

No Matter

What does it matter
When nothing matters
When everything’s in tatters
Scattered like particles
Vanishing into the dark.

Steve Cannon

*     *     *

Who Puts the Who in HooDoo? You Do?

Dearly Bereaved Believed Befuddled Besneezed
Those Rocking Chairs Don’t Rock No More No More Department
Proudly presents The Opening Words Department:
As Uncle Willie used to say,
         We are gathered here today
                  Because we’re not gathered anywhere else today

And now as then peeling rubbers back again
The full frontal glottal screws head back on tight
Adjusts air-gatherer faux lung to tongue
And lets loose with the HOWL! that shatters hallucination
Namely HOWLUCINATION! whereupon what was Spirit
Eats itself on board Flesh, tangent spew and do I hear an Amen

Grappling hooks lose their grapple
Models step through runway disappear
And the Red Spark tenderly gingerly mellowly
Propulsively maniacally without a doubt
NeoHooDoo No Doubt socket fixture
Claims final blister, karmafies, retaliates

Ain’t Dead Yet! resonates a cakey shadow
Faun and Lizard dance the All Together Now
Dearly Besmirched Besotted Bejeweled Begotten
The One True Beat takes control of your Two Feet Left
And without as much as an I Got You Covered
Transcendeth Crisis Joy Noise! Gets Hell Outta Dodge!

Bob Holman

*     *     *

Four Improvisations on Frank Morgan, Saxophonist

Chippy speaks of me as someone she can’t write
home about. She takes note of each tune I chance
to hollow out of the ether as if she’s assessing
my investment in being. Iago as the lover
he would be. Bitter sycophant, the mock détente
of her grift, the glistening, the gentle bells
pealing behind her zippering teeth.

Chippy wants to speak for me. She writes
poems about me enchanted by the hollow
brass I use to scuba through each irked note
that ignites the spite swimming in my blood.
Imago of the mother I would be if I would for once
unlace the garment binding lover and enemy,
fractures scribbling rib bones with each shallow breath.

Chippy wishes she could speak to me. She writes
me love notes sprinkled with ire. She imagines me
enchanted by the embargo the notes hope to broker
in hollow sentiment scratched across the page.
I used to buy that tired song: someone utterly in love
with suffering and the ways we we it, spite
grunting under the cursive hand lacing it mute.

Chippy keeps asking me to speak. She has a right,
she claims, to the music she once followed note for note
into a bed where I imagine we resembled my saxophone
and a fire plug, our defenses stable as the Maginot Line.
The phone keeps igniting. Its cord curled like concertina
wire. Our devotion transparent as the acrylic window
in San Quentin ensuring no fingers ever lace.

Gregory Pardlo

*     *     *

Crossroads

The father is long gone to the other side
but the raspy edge of his laughing
echoes through the tunnels of her brain.
She is the daughter who can’t sleep without dreaming
him knocking at the door of her quiet
with the story he told.
He told it again and again
laughing as he told it.
She remembers the child she was
sitting at the grandma’s kitchen table
grown-ups all around-
the aunts and uncles, seven of them,
the youngest boy gone from sick
doctor couldn’t say what
but everybody knew he played too much
woman put something in he food. 

They recall this lost one
laughing and talking about home-
not this America but back on the island.
Then, because the big house in the Bronx is old and creaking
her father tells the story again-
when he was a boy
taking the short cut at night
crossing the cemetary behind the church
with only the moonlight
and whispers of ghosts carried on tradewinds.
There was a veve at the crossroads
and shadows raising question:
Which way to go?
Everybody knows duppies can’t hurt you
unless they’re alive with your fear.
Her father always said:
Without learning to swim
there’s no leaving the island. 

At the grandma’s table
there is always fish and rice and peas
and okra and heavy bread-
bitter mauby or spicey ginger beer
comes ladled from a big ceramic crock.
Her small voice says: I swallowed a bone.
The point of it is lodged in her throat
but before there is choking and blood
Aunt Lorna wisks her off to the bathroom
forcing fingers in the girl’s mouth
making her gag and throw up-
the bone of a dead fish
swirling down the toilet whirlpool-
the ghosts in the shadows had followed
the father and the aunts and uncles-
followed them from the island to this new land-
ghosts hovering near the water tank above the toilet-
ghosts waiting to return her soul to the island-
this girl who had not yet learned to swim.

Lois Elaine Griffith

*     *     *

Meek Cursing by a Southern Belle 

trifling hoodoo tricks,
gap-teeth,
high-yellow,
milky, dirty, danky, doo-doo blood/

a farter—
someone who thought their farts were funny
someone who cast spells, but tricked them up
with lipstick and pigs
and puffs of smoke that got yanked out of the air by clumsiness,
ill will,
and insults/

Magic-less in a world of Magic,
a cock sucker,
a petty prostitute
in a dank yard
with junk and dust and hope and bricks and wheelbarrows
and stolen cars/

hoo doo
trick blood
instead of
thick blood
dead blood
instead of
red blood
Voodoo—

finding a pebble sent to my tub,
water washing,
gushing through half-screwed-on pipes
trumping some bitch who drew my blood with a drill—
trumping a hooker just by taking a shower,
no Holy Water necessary this time

I remember that day—
blood splashing all over my feet
chickens ca-cawed, but they were my chickens
flames may have flickered, but they were my flames
saints said prayers, but they were my saints

and hurricanes—
they came
operated by some man in a hut
on Monkey Hill at the Audubon Zoo
where they all suspiciously asked for you/

there he maddened the mayor,
the butcher, the baker, and the levee maker
becoming a cunning son of a bitch money-raker
life-taker
a change-maker,
to say the least,
just like you/

you stole my electricity
blinded me to my own rosaries, my crosses, my lettuce, my lipstick—
I lost stuff, all of my stuff
you stole stuff, all of my stuff—
it just kept raining
and all I could do
was think of you
because you were more mean
more trifling
more petty

oh, the worms you must have eaten to become so ugly
how you turned off my heat
ripped up my walls and turned them grey
with tears
and stole my money
and threw water on my photos—
I had to hide them from you,
memories dripping off photo paper
wax burning
`hair burning
phony laughs hollered into a gong
tricks, nails, candles
and your name scribbled
in the cuck and muck
of the bottom of my shoe/

That day,
I walked around on you.

Melanie Maria Goodreaux

*     *     *

miss moccasin

coil and push. she finds momma. nearer to the bank.
a particular bank. muddy red deep. brown red mud
where catfish slide. and wallow she creeps. uncoils
adjusts her weight. the fork of her tongue. smells the air.
smells momma’s diaper. if there were diapers.
smells milk spilt. the hole in the nipple. too big to hold
milk in. if there were a bottle. her mouth whipping white.
like cotton great grand ma picked. if she picked
like puffy pussy willows. like bleached blouses. no matter.
she reaches. wraps around. breaths in momma. waits.
who’s muscle does its constricting? does she ever constrict?

close & afar there’s great grand ma. down the bank. up the
bank. tending to mud. red mud. catfish in the mud.
red mud coats her ankles. not like salt mines. more like
socks. probably therapeutic. probably not. catches dinner for
2 or 3 days. down the bank.

up the bank. she returns. skirt. or overalls. coated with mud.
the straw in her hat unwinds beneath the sun. hot kacalak sun.
forearms have twisted chicken necks. have handled a shotgun
pretty good. have warned male cousins of their wrong doing to
women. have placed shotguns in the faces of men. ready for the
nanny? walks up to momma. says hello to miss moccasin.
thanks her for keeping eye on her grandbaby. thanks her for
eating before she came to work. thanks her making sure no one
else came slithering over. great grand ma unwraps the nanny.
tosses her aside politely. takes momma and the catfish
on home. the snake. with thorns for fangs. be’s on her way. 

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

Steve Cannon is an author, playwright, publisher and retired CUNY professor, and the founder of A Gathering of the Tribes.

Bob Holman is founder of the Bowery Poetry Club, and Visiting Professor of Writing at Columbia University and NYU.

Gregory Pardlo is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and teaches creative writing at Medgar Evers College, CUNY.

Lois Elaine Griffith is one of the directors of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and a Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan College.

Melanie Maria Goodreaux is a poet, playwright, actress, and director. Originally from New Orleans, she is a stellar and imaginative dramatist whose work has been featured all across the country.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a writer, vocalist, and sound artist, and the author of three chapbooks and an album. She is a Harlem Elohi Aniyunwiya.