THE ARGONNE HOTEL PRESS CHAPBOOK SERIES

BRAIN CUSTODY
Poems by MARY WESTCOTT

Breath, Fish, Memory • Conned • Brain Custody • September Sleet Song • Cardiomyopathy • Sadness • At The Prom, 1964 • Virginia Roads • Melancholy • There, Always there • Seething Sea • Winter Cold • Head Cold • Stable Keeper • Prayer to Blackwater Falls • Snowy Birth • My Mirror • Nowhere to Blow • Infatuation • Trust • The Witch’s Curse • Arise • Summer Night • It Is • Poem of Silence • Muddy Ventricles • My Hand • Wayland, Massachusetts 1954 • Blue Freedom • Cracked Shell Love Predicaments • Fear in St. John • Dead Woman Talking • Pain

$7.00 US • 48 pages
Copyright © 1999 Argonne Hotel Press. ISBN 1-88761-37-8
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The Witch’s Curse

Just about noon
the three of us went
over by the public
health parking lot
to put a hex
on you

We threw your picture
in a garbage heap,
and asked for you
to get what
you gave
me.

I didn’t know guilt.

We had a witch among us
who had caused a
miscarriage
in her ex-lover’s wife.

We said words
directed to the heap,
the witch leading
the chant

Months passed,
maybe a year
I heard you came
back with a damaged heart
Enlarged, they said,
so young, maybe
a transplant

Then I knew guilt.