The children are cannibals

I think I believe in curses: real damnations, sometimes biblical,
in the South they're called Hoodoo.
We only have curanderas in San Antonio, but you can find recipes
without interpretation: black mustard seed,
white mustard seed, devil shoestring root. Everything in the world
is an herb; everything has powers.
A year ago, I spent three days in New Orleans
and passed a shrine to an alligator in woman's clothing.
It was a surrogate for a witch, dead since 1900; a black man
sold candles that burned red and added blessings to prayers.

"Do you think it's real?" my friend asked.
Oh, there is darkness we can't imagine.
In the street, old women sold animal heads
and dresses made with thick strings.

I was thinking about the soul which works like a channel.
Some places are empty of light. The Southside is full of police
cruisers and young prostitutes. I heard about a child
locked in a room for two weeks.
It wasn't far from here. The men who owned the house
pumped her full of narcotics and let others rape her
until a detective came. The detective told me,
so I assume it's all true.

Less so the television, airing a movie
about lost children in the New Jersey forests.
A professor had taught their boy-leader lines from Beowulf,
and these children became Grendels, speaking in alliteration,
eating hikers, and you think:
how did it come to this? What is a curse?
The Japanese produce horror films about it; Americans follow.
We have such deep imaginations--stories from the neighborhoods
to inspire us. You have to believe them,
as much as you believe in needles: pushpins in a sacred doll,
and also syringes. I pray without candles.