Gris-Gris is a journal of literature, culture, and the arts located at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

Our second issue features poetry by Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Ava Leavell Haymon, Ann Keniston, Jack Bedell, and others. Fiction by Karin C. Davidson, Robert James Russell, and others, as well as artwork by Dennis Sipiorski.

Dennis Sipiorski, Issue Two.

Negritude by Yusef Komunyakaa, from Issue Two

I have also been left singing Careless Love

but my negritude is nobody’s coonskin cap

   on a mountaintop or down by the riverside.

My negritude has sucked all the joy juice

from the days of wild virginal forests

   I made to kneel with axe & crosscut.

My negritude has beaten tom-toms

till the drawstring of doubt unraveled

   & blood leaked on my blue suede shoes.

My negritude came a long ways to find me

in Louisiana beside beckoning quicksand,

   a disappearing act & the double limbo.

My negritude is the caul worked into soil

brought back to life by cosmic desire

   & gratitude baked into my daily bread.

My negritude sways before a viper’s

truth serum on an iron spearhead,

   belladonna tucked behind my left ear.

From afar, Cesaire, your wit & fidelity

made me stumble-dance a half mile

   here, beyond any puppet’s hallelujah,

while grandmama sat in a wheelchair

among the tangled rows of collards,

   okra, speckled peas, & sweet corn,

digging with a hoe honed so many years

the blade was a quarter moon—all the

   strength she had in her twisted body.

Now, even if this is a sign of my negritude,

I still remember a rain-drenched sun

   rising out of the loony old scrub oaks.

Sure, I know the tiger neither speaks

of her tigritude nor the blood she’s left

   on grass & wildflowers around the tombs.

*So how do you pronounce Gris-Gris anyway?