BY ANA MARÍA CABALLERO
Birthright
I sat with every good witch in Bogotá
just to dispel your rage—
Elsa, Elizabeth, Nelly, Camila,
Lucy, Ernesto, Sergio, and Blasta.
Upon each cot, upon each couch,
concurring truths voiced
by deliberate mouths.
For a year, I performed the prescribed tasks:
scrub the joints with rosewater seeped
in sea salt during tea tree, eucalyptus,
sandalwood baths.
At home, spray each door with licorice
mist. At work, sulfate, alcohol, sage
ablaze on a pan.
My homework last month to recite
on the road, the Ho’oponopono
Hawaiian forgiveness song:
No, you are not pain:
you are my brother,
my beloved Master of
Grace.
The future, present, past cast
by Blasta’s stars. She points to Saturn, to Mars
in hard aspect in my chart’s family house.
My sign is Cancer. I am
gentle, gentle as crab.
Yet, Blasta confirms your cut is not my claw:
just you and I born under every guise—
Husband & Wife, Father &
Daughter, Mother & Son.
Brother & Sister, our latest run,
our latest crack,
at one more slight life
toward wise.
I sat with every good witch in Bogotá
just to dispel your rage—
Elsa’s filters, Lucy’s needles, Nelly’s Reiki
massage. Feldspar, pyrite, your printed name
blurred by water beneath
clean glass.
I brew parsley, beetroot, cardamom, wheatgrass,
and browsed online
for clay emanations
of Hindu gods.
One by one, I trace Elizabeth’s steps:
on yellow cardboard sketch a musical
clef, then set seven candles each in purple,
white, green onto the symbol’s circular cores.
White for light, green for mind to materialize,
and purple to burn
emotional sores.
God box, angel cards, universal tarot:
Hierophant beside the Hanged Man both laid
in reverse.
A tepid yes, then, an absolute no
below
Camila’s jasper
pendulum swirl.
Upon the first sign of new sun,
I murmur the Gayatri mantra’s numinous chant
(Om bhur buvah swaha…)
while at the first sign of new moon,
a hired hand performs a lemon peel stab.
I sat with every good witch in Bogotá
just to dispel your rage—
Sergio draws my gemological map.
Each gem a pattern, a specific instruction
dialed by the earth for me to
extract.
I call after the second and third amethysts crack—
Dig a hole, he says. Their job is done.
Bury the crystals, return them to land.
Water slaps by Ernesto’s clan of urban gnomes,
before sitting down to his tobacco ring of smoke,
water dripping from my head while I read King David’s psalms
until, in the chimney room,
the black cigar jar finally snaps.
But, when your sickness came, I seek surgical
help via Lezahlee, the head witch of Carmel—
I swear, I say, I already forgave.
Besides, my craft is not there,
yet.
She burps, as she does when she knows:
The tumor is old. This lesson is his,
not yours.
True, your tumor is message,
indictment of flesh
from its source.
But it’s as much mine as it is yours,
for you are the story
I am born to rewrite.
Mother likes to tell how, at three,
I selected your name.
Forever my birthright—I am bound
to you
by spell.
Ana María Caballero is a first-generation Colombian-American poet and artist. Her first book of poetry, Entre domingo y domingo, won Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize and was second place in the nationwide Ediciones Embajales Prize. She graduated with a magna cum laude degree from Harvard University and has been a runner-up for the Academy of Amercian Poets Prize. A Petit Mal was awarded the International Beverly Prize and was also a finalist for the Kurt Brown Prize, the Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Awards, the Essay Press Prize, the Split/Lip Press reading cycle and longlisted for the 2022 Memoir Prize.