A raw, spiritually charged reckoning that exposes how prophetic gifts—especially within Black communities—have been demonized by fear, colonization, and religious control. This piece reclaims the power of ancestral intelligence, Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions, and embodied knowing, while challenging those who mistake divinity for danger. It is both a remembrance and a return: to the oracle, to the altar, and to the voice that never needed permission to speak.

At five years old, I watched a voodoo priestess enter my kitchen and awaken something in me I’d never forget. My mother called it imagination. But my body knew better. There Was a Dead Chicken in the Middle of the Kitchen Floor is a visceral, poetic remembrance of ancestral power, psychic inheritance, and the kind of truth that can’t be silenced—even when it’s denied.