Teaser Tuesdays: A House of Bottles by Robin Merrill

I received this poetry book from the author and thought of posting this poem as a teaser. As the book blurb says, her poems are "edgy, troubling and unadorned, daring one to be vulnerable." Sometimes funny, sometimes frank.

She said, "I watched her choke,
on chicken blood and gin, and dance until
the witchdoctor took her in-
to his hut and I heard her hurt
and he came out and grinned, pronounced her
banished. My family sent me with her.
I gather sticks to burn, search for food,
fetch water from the well. I am stronger
than the old women. I am nine.
I am the witch's granddaughter."

When I asked her what she wanted to be
when she grew up, she answered, "you."

Yani Camp
-Ghana, 2006

~page 4, A House of Bottles by Robin Merrill