Two Poems — by Grant Clauser

 
To Treat a Bewitched Cow or Broken Heart  

Write the name of your mother
and father and lover and your lover’s
first love

on three strips of white paper
then cook them in a pot of milk
from the cow or sweat from your mother

or blood from your father

then find the skull of a criminal
and scrape it three times
into the pot

next scream three times
at your lover and three times
at her first lover

then all the witches will die
and your cow will ever
be well again.

 

To Settle Strife Among Relations

Catch a buzzard by its beak
and break the stones in its knees,

feed the buzzard bones to your uncle
and the wife he beats

and he will love her forever
and follow her about the house

like a scavenger picking up
anything she leaves behind.

 

~  ~  ~
Grant Clauser is the author of two poetry books, Necessary Myths (Broadkill River Press 2013) and The Trouble with Rivers (Foothills Publishing 2012). Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cheat River Review, Mason’s Road and others. He also writes about electronics, teaches poetry at Musehouse Writing Center and chases trout with a stick. Grant’s blog is www.uniambic.com