Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Constantine Jones is a Greek-American thingmaker raised in Tennessee & currently housed in Brooklyn. They are a member of the Visual AIDS Aritst+ Registry & teach creative writing at CCNY. Their work has been performed or exhibited at various venues across the city & their debut hybrid haunted house novel, IN STILL ROOMS, is forthcoming via The Operating System on March 4th, 2020. It is currently available for preorder.
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Kristian Macaron resides in Albuquerque, NM, but is often elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook collection is titled, Storm. Other fiction and poetry publications can be found in The Winter Tangerine Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Medusa’s Laugh Press, The Mantle Poetry, Philadelphia Stories, Gaygoyle Magazine, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. She is a co-founding editor of the literary journal, Manzano Mountain Review. View her work at Kristianmacaron.com
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Alex Vigue is a queer writer from a small town in Washington State. He has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Western Washington University and has been recently published in Peach Mag, Chronotope, and Homology Lit. His debut chapbook “The Myth of Man” was published by Floating Bridge Press. He is the co-host of Literary Merit, a queer podcast about celebrating guilty pleasures in media.
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Laura Linart is a poet and writer based in New York City. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Green Mountains Review, The Rumpus, Pembroke Magazine and 580Splits. Say hi to her on Twitter or IG @Pennyscientist
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BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Here’s a small peak into what 2020 has in store for us, thanks to these wonderful authors and small/indie presses (and of course, stay tuned for more lists for upcoming books). Check out this list for five other books.
Kelly Grace Thomas - Boat Burned (YesYes Books)
It’s hard not to be excited by a book blurbed by Paige Lewis, sam sax, Jennifer Givhan, and Tiana Clark - all poets I adore. Sax wrote, “In this remarkable inaugural collection, Kelly Grace Thomas reminds us water is where we are from, water is what we are made of, and water is where we’ll return.” That’s enough to convince me.
Read an excerpt here:
“They say tell me
a story and you never know
the right way to spill.
This is the one where you
and your father tied
yourselves to dark. Sailed
all night to make it
to Florida. Holding only a memory
of sleep. This was the biggest
goodbye.”
Nelson Simón (translated by Lawrence Schimel) - Itinerario del olvido / Itinerary of Forgetting (Skull + Wind Press)
I’m so excited about this collection (and this press!). As the press wrote on the site, the book is “ a sixteen-part series from Nelson Simón’s award-winning collection A la sombra de los muchachos en flor, which won both the Julián del Casal Poetry Prize from La Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba and later the Premio de la Crítica Literaria. Itinerary of Forgetting is Simón’s first publication in English and has been translated by Lawrence Schimel. Simón’s work tackles both homosexuality & politics (an act both bold and brave for an openly gay writer in Cuba in the late 90s) while at the same time situating itself within the lyric traditions of both Cuba and the larger Spanish-speaking world.”
Kerrin McCadden - Keep This to Yourself (Button Poetry)
McCadden’s collection deals with family and grief, which is a world all of us know well. Her poetry cuts through the body like a knife slicing an apple that isn’t an apple. You can experience this for yourself, and read a poem here:
“Sometimes I pray. Want to know what else? That first day?
I stayed home and left my students with a substitute
who got mad at them when they cried. I also did that. “
Arhm Choi Wild - Cut to Bloom (Write Bloody)
I’ve been a reader of Wild’s work for some time now, and it’s always been powerful, full of wisdom, and unafraid. So, naturally, I’m excited for this monumental collection to come out. The book centers around identity, survival, trauma, and what it means to be American.
Read a poem of Wild’s here:
“It is for the cost of loving this country,
of finally feeling like I fit in,
like I have found the people
to whom I belong.
Gay people don’t exist in Korea,
and I am holding back a tongue
that could break this mirage
because seeing men not afraid to hold hands
and fix each other’s ties is too beautiful—
beautiful like a kiss
in the naked soft of morning,
beautiful like a mother
welcoming her daughter home.”
Abayomi Animashaun (editor) - Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets (Black Lawrence Press)
Give more more books about writing. They’re so essential for everyone at every stage in their writing life, and are so often underrepresented and/or talked about. For beginners, we all need a guide. But for writers of experience, they can get us out of own heads.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor: A Photo Series (forthcoming), and A Love Story (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault and the illustrator of Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.
BY MONIQUE QUINTANA
Kristin Garth’s chapbook, shut your eyes, succubi ( Maverick Duck Press, 2019) , is both delightful and frightening, a conjuring of girlhood with a form inclined to romance-- the sonnet. A prolific sonneteer in a digital age, Garth understands that while some memories seem as distant as old TV sets and radio fuzz, certain characters are bright and alive and fun in our psyche and they turn up in the most opportune places.
This was the first time I read poetry with handwritten annotations, which added a poignant whimsy to the experience. As I moved further and further into the poems, each character seemed to be linked together by the same dark energy. In “Eat Me”, objects, fashion, and delicacies push each line to a sexual moment. There is no meek girl Alice of yesteryear, rather a woman who has autonomy in a scene. Stripped of masquerade, she dominates and commands as a true queen of hearts.
Two other standout sonnets are “ Claudia” and “Veruca Wants”. Both pieces reckon with the image and the sentiments of the brat girl, a girl decked with material things, who is much too grown-up for the world that she lives in. “Claudia” tells of Interview with the Vampire’s doomed enfant, a character who remains elusive in both Rice’s novel and the cinematic dreamscape of Neil Jordan’s 1994 take: “ Resolve to keep her safe at hand, but she / is something you don’t understand .”
The poem seems to acknowledge that we, the grand audience, both love and detest Claudia because she’s an unlikable girl, but also our beloved. Like “Claudia”, “Veruca Wants” made me take pause and look back at my girlhood. When I was small and I asked for material things or complained about things that were making me unhappy, my grandmother called me “Veruca” and waited for the sweet and stoic parts of me to return. Garth’s sonnet carries the want for decadence over to womanhood: “ Men / who’ll jump before she screams.” The sonnet plays with the idea that we create the very decadence that we need. It’s not the reaching for rich things, but when we’re compelled to articulate desire to the point of screaming.
Monique Quintana is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019) and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Fresno. Her work has appeared in Winter Tangerine, Queen Mobs Tea House and Acentos Review, among other publications. She is a Senior Editor at Luna Luna Magazine, Fiction Editor at Five 2 One Magazine, and writes about Latinx literature at her blog, Blood Moon. You can find her at moniquequintana.com
BY CATE MCGOWAN
Below a yellowed tree,
weeds fringe the driveway’s
borders. Anoles pump.
They jut, and the bigger
lizards skitter along
the yard’s edge. While
daylight’s needles stitch
threads up the spathodea,
seven DeKay’s snakes slue
like scarves through
the new ivy. Though
it’s already five o’clock,
I haven’t heard from you
yet. Not this week.
Not this month. You’re
gone without a word.
So far, only green silence.
Someone next door opens
a second floor window,
and a toddler shrieks
and shatters the stillness.
The child’s cry skylarks
the mimosa, shrinks,
then dissipates through
the evening’s haze. I shake
out our wet clothes.
In the breeze, the clothesline
snaps my red blouse
as it dances, my empty sleeves
waving in the wind to no one.
Cate McGowan is a fiction writer, essayist, and poet. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Norton's Flash Fiction International, Glimmer Train, Crab Orchard Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Crab Fat Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, Barrelhouse, Shenandoah, Into the Void, Louisville Review, Atticus Review, Vestal Review, Unbroken, and elsewhere. A native Georgian, McGowan's an Assistant Fiction Editor for Pithead Chapel and is pursuing her Ph.D. She won the 2014 Moon City Short Fiction Award for her debut short story collection, True Places Never Are, published in 2015, and her debut novel, These Lowly Objects, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press.
The Magical Writing Grimoire is a book of inclusive and accessible rituals and writing prompts for anyone who feels called to using words as a source of healing, empowerment, joy, generativity, and self-exploration. It is designed to integrate ritualistic living and to incorporate sacredness into our lives in meaningful and easy ways.
It’s for witches and non-witches (including people with secular beliefs, like myself), although of course it’s heavily based off the archetype of the witch: The witch, to me, is strong, rebellious, empowered, empathic, and bold as fuck. The witch is also conscious — of the self and others and the earth. So, it works heavily with archetypes and symbols, but it invites people who have specific beliefs to incorporate their beliefs into the work.
Really, the book is about tapping into and using your own power, your own voice, your own ideas.
It’s for writers and non-writers — anyone who is interested in the sacred, beautiful power of poetry or journaling or letter-writing, or timing writing practices to nature’s ebb and flow.
It also focuses heavily on shadow work — or unearthing the silenced, dark, shadowy parts of the self.
Lots of rituals, lots of writing prompts, meditations, quotes from the most inspirational and wonderful people and writers, poems I wrote myself, glimpses into my personal life, and so much more. Plus, it’s really beautifully illustrated.
The book was gestating in my mind for several years, but I didn’t know what its shape until the past year or so; I knew I wanted to write a writing guide — one that balanced the ritualistic with the pragmatic and every day, one that used writing as a form of magic. More than using the occult in order to generate writing, it’s about using writing to make your life more magical.
It starts with the word and ends with the word.
It’s deeply rooted in recovering from pain and trauma. When I was younger, the number one thing that got me through times of extreme trauma (family separation, foster care, CPTSD, financial instability, chronic illness) was writing. Writing gave me my voice back. It was a tool for reclamation. But more so, it was a tool for joy, creativity, and empowerment.
The ability to write is a privilege for many of us, but it’s also a free tool that can help save us. I’ve seen writing help women in domestic shelters, college students move through self-esteem issues, and incarcerated individuals tell their story. It is something sacred in itself because with our words we are taking nothing and making it into something.
So I wanted to design a gentle but effective book that people — especially any marginalized community — could use to tap into their truth and self, in a way that felt right for them. It’s guided, but it allows space for reinterpretation and individuality so that anyone can tap in.
It is, and it’s not. Like Light Magic for Dark Times, it is grounded in accessibility and inclusivity. It also offers different (but looser) chapter focuses, like manifestation, mindfulness, healing, conjuring your voice, creating a grimoire, and more.
Unlike Light Magic for Dark Times, it provides a much deeper dive in terms of the rituals and the writing prompts, and it’s filled with poetry and quotes to meditate on. It’s also much more about the process of long-term self-exploration (and excavation!) than about quick, one-off rituals for different purposes. I think the two actually pair super well together!
I’m secular (for lack of a better, more nuanced word), so I don’t work with or believe in gods, goddesses, angles or other deities. However, I work closely with the natural world (especially the power and energy of water), shadow work, energy, archetypes, and symbols. For example, I see the elements as powerful tools, offering lessons and glimpses of the purity of aliveness — and I see the astrological signs as symbols of the human condition.
It’s born on April 21, so it’s a Taurus! But let’s be honest — it was finalized and sent to the printer during Scorpio season. It’s very much a Scorpio book — it’s dark, intense, powerful, and transformative. But, like a Taurus, it wants to find beauty, comfort, and artistry. And because it comes out in the Spring, it’s a great way to kick off the new year with energy, creation, and rebirth.
People are already saying some really kind things about it, and it’s included in a few Most Anticipated lists, like in Cunning Folk and over at Patheos by Mat Auryn.
BY MADISON MCKEEVER
I’ve been fangirling over author and overall goddess Kristen Sollée ever since I first read her book, Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive. Aptly named after just a few of the contested identities assigned to women who misbehave, Witches, Sluts, Feminists delves into the origins and intricacies of witch feminism and its intersection with reproductive rights, sexual pleasure, queer identity, porn, sex work, and many other topics.
From a historical perspective, witches have often been associated with specific cultural functions, either enchanting as feminist symbols of empowerment, or inspiring terror in a paranoid misogynistic Miller-esque fever dream. In recent years, witchcraft, magic, and other alternative spiritual practices have been the focus of increased attention and subsequent scrutiny, as people experiment and engage with feminism in all of its iterations.
Throughout her work, Kristen has spoken with countless activists, scholars, artists, and practitioners of witchcraft in order to enrich the public’s understanding of witch feminism and illustrate that witches in all forms, from Tituba to Stevie Nicks to Sabrina to The Hoodwitch, are powerful and relevant well beyond the month of October.
In addition to being a champion of female sexuality, Kristen is the founding editrix of the sex positive collective, Slutist (RIP), and is a gender studies lecturer at The New School. Her second book, Cat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine: An Untamed History of the Cat Archetype in Myth and Magic was just released in September. Kristen herself is too fucking cool, whether she’s speaking out against SESTA/ FOSTA or rocking a killer purple lip on Instagram. She’s brilliant and generous enough with her time that earlier this year I had the pleasure of speaking with her about Witches, Sluts, Feminists, capitalism, and fighting for sexual liberation.
MM: How did you first become interested in the topic of witch feminism?
KS: It’s a long, circuitous story filled with both intention and magical intervention, but I’ve been interested in the occult since childhood, was raised by a feminist intuitive, and found my way to this subject first personally, and then professionally.
MM: What was the process of researching and writing this book like?
KS: Not pretty. Writing a book like this required confronting a lot of my own personal demons as I was interviewing dozens of people, scouring libraries and bookstores and websites for source material, and meditating on how I could do justice to a history so rife with pain and persecution that has been obscured and manipulated in numerous ways. It wasn’t something that was always fun or easy, but it was overall a joyful project to get to amplify voices that matter so much to me.
MM: In Witches, Sluts, Feminists, you polled 50 people about the definition of “witch,” and came back with a wide variety of answers. What’s your personal definition?
KS: The witch evades a single definition—that’s the beauty of the concept, really—but I will try! A lightning rod. A change-maker. A caretaker. Priestess of the persecuted. Harridan and hierophant. Rooted in the earthly and the astral. Fact and fiction, feminine and masculine, and so many things. The witch will forever be a shapeshifter.
MM: Do you think there is a generational/ geographical/ socio-economic connection to how the idea of the witch is viewed?
KS: Definitely. There are those who understand the witch to be an archetype of empowerment, those who see her as a Satanic seductress or a relic of religious persecution, and those who think she’s merely a cartoon hag to chuckle at on Halloween. It all depends on your own background and belief system and knowledge of the history.
MM: If you had to pick a witch or goddess that you’re most inspired by, who would it be?
KS: Oh there are so many, but I will pick a fictional one: Elvira. A witch who wields her sexuality in potent and playful ways. So many witches in fiction are so serious, she’s really a breath of fresh air. And a forever style icon as well!
MM: What are your “required reading” books for anyone looking to learn more about witch feminism?
KS: Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch; Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance ; Maryse Conde’s I Tituba: Black Witch of Salem.
MM: Aside from reading, what are some resources for witches-in-training who are looking to educate themselves about practices, lineage, and history?
KS: Your local occult shop, or, if you don’t have one, The Hoodwitch’s online community. There are infinite folks to follow online, too, but some of my faves for inspiration and education in addition to @thehoodwitch are @themexicanwitch; @iamsarahpotter; @jaliessasipress.
MM: Do you see witch feminism as a lifestyle, a religion, or a hobby that can be shelved and called upon at times when it’s needed? I’m thinking primarily of practicing witchcraft in the age of Trump, and how many feminists are calling upon chanting, intention candles, hexes, and crystalogy as self-care rituals to heal from oppressive and toxic masculine government forces. Does witchcraft look different depending on what it’s needed for?
KS: Absolutely. Everyone’s spiritual and political practice looks different. There is no one way to use these powerful tools. Some folks don’t believe in mixing their witchcraft and their politics. Others believe witchcraft is specifically for healing and fighting oppression in the personal and political realms and that you cannot separate the two.
MM: Why do you think witches are so trendy right now? Is it because so many people need an ideology that centers around empowered women? Is it a form of escapism? Or are people just looking for a source of spiritual healing in a world that increasingly feels more and more hopeless?
KS: All of the above.
MM: How do you feel about the intersection in recent years between witchcraft and capitalism? In Witches, Sluts, Feminists you highlight multiple voices in the witch community and the disparate opinions on the topic, but you also point out that, “the witch is ‘the embodiment of a world of female subjects that capitalism had to destroy’ in order for the reigning economic order to triumph” (132). What are the implications of capitalism co-opting witchcraft without educating consumers about the origins of their purchase? (ahem, Sephora)
KS: I am quoting Silvia Federici there, but yes, it is very necessary to address capitalism’s co-optation of witchcraft and the occult, particularly when workers (often women in sweatshops around the world) are actively harmed in the making of “witchy” products and when closed, indigenous practices are being stolen from in the process. That’s not witchcraft, it’s exploitation.
MM: What are your feelings on Trump’s ironic and often repeated use of the term “witch-hunt” in reference to himself and the media? I think the linguistic significance of this is fascinating based on what it entails, historically- speaking.
KS: Like much of what Trump says, it’s a horrendous distortion of historical fact. It also goes to show how much misinformation there is about what “witch hunts” actually were—and are today.
MM: One of the popular phrases that has gotten circulated across social media and throughout women’s marches in the last year reads (in some iteration), “Nasty Women are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn.” Considering this and the prevalence of witch and goddess energy within the #metoo movement, do you think the spiritual and the political can intersect for the greater good?
KS: Absolutely, as long as the spiritual doesn’t become dogmatic. There still has to be room for spiritual and religious dissent and plurality or we’re no different than the religious right.
MM: I’m fascinated by the sexual connotations of American witch history, how witches were seen as harnessing an impure (ie. un-Christian) sexual appetite, and how the deeply patriarchal nature of early New England allowed this ideology to perpetuate until people were put to death. Can you speak more about how and why you think a deep-seated fear of female sexuality exists?
KS: Patriarchal religion—in America’s case Christianity—is at fault for this one. When you have an origin story that places female desire as the root of pain and suffering (hello, Eve) you’re not off to a very good start, you know?
MM: Why do you think the world seems to be threatened by sexually enlightened womxn, or womxn who unabashedly identify as sluts? Are sluts viewed as a threat to masculinity because subverting the terminology pushes back against the misogyny of our government and world?
KS: Being unapologetic about your sexuality or your body as a woman or a person on the feminine spectrum remains so radical because it counters everything that patriarchal society dictates about the masculine dominating the feminine.
MM: Are “witch,” “slut,” and “feminist” synonymous terms?
KS: No, I don’t think so, although there is great overlap between them depending on culture and context. To me, they are beautifully complex, complimentary terms.
MM: Do you think the meteoric rise of witches will continue indefinitely?
KS: Witches may not be splashed across The New York Times forever, but they certainly aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. And thank goddess for that.
Madison McKeever is a writer based in New York City. She probably wants to ask what your favorite book is. She's passionate about true crime, Timothee Chalamet's sartorial decisions, Instagram cats, and talking about the orgasm gap. Find her @thesleepygirlscout
BY KHALISA RAE
Tea Party at the Cemetery
We built a haunting in the silent spaces,
buried a living thing in my childhood baby dolls
and music box ballerinas’ splitting their limbs to stay
in step, Dancing Bear books and ice skates rest
on the shelves now covered in dust just
wanting to rest, but the rot keeps them up.
We buried a breathing thing here—
a coffin for each memory we didn’t dare
dig up. Spirits lurking
around every pageant queen trophy
and all the trinkets we used to convince her she
was a girl, innocent girl. A jewelry box filled
with twenty years of secrets. Things no one
dared to tell.
This door has been locked and shut;
a locket on the dresser to remind us that memories
are best kept away and private.
Photographs of me smiling, but wanting to
shutter and run. No one could tell
I was waiting for the day to escape the porcelain faces,
the Minnie Mouse pink patterned sheets and curtains,
The repetitive tv static and terror that only
resides in my head now.
I remember my 17th birthday,
how I was so ready to run free
from the carousels and tutus,
run away from the thought of home.
I peeked inside my room for the last time
before leaving; I could have sworn I saw
them all dancing, drinking tea
on the graves.
Khalisa Rae is a native of North Carolina and is a graduate of the Queens University MFA program. Her recent work has been seen in Glass Poetry, Brave Voices, Hellebore, Honey & Lime, Tishman Review, the Obsidian, Anchor Magazine, New Shoots Anthology, Red Press, Roses Lit, among others. She was a finalist in the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and a winner of the Fem Lit Magazine Contest, White Stag Publishing Contest. She is staff editor for Kissing Dynamite and Carve Magazine. Her forthcoming collection, Ghost in a Black Girls Throat is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2021. She is also the newest writer for B*tch Media and Out/Body Magazine.
BY SARAH STOCKTON
A note from the author: The artist Melissa McCanna made an ekphrastic painting (see below) after the below poem "Salt and Other Spells.” It was exhibited at a gallery in Washington.
Melissa McCanna
We were water once
cyclical, transforming
salt and sediment into scales
anadromous/
moving from sea into sweet water
catadromous/
fresh to salt
to spawn/ traveling
in deep sea channels
transitioning/
from silvery blue
to darker, going home
as we, floundering at water’s edge
turn in four directions/
three visions/ seven cycles
scrying into water
Ablating
the effluvia clogging my heart, cauterizing
rusty swords blackberry thorns
Ripping
apart whole decades, reams of
photographs prayer books
Shrinking
into a shape un-recognizable
binding cloths barbed wire cloaks
Rolling
jade stones over my face
chemical peels tuning forks
Throwing
myself on the mercy of the court
strip teases plea bargains
Writing
love letters to my maker
confessions devotions
Sarah Stockton, MA. After several years working in urban universities as staff and adjunct, Sarah now lives in the rural Pacific Northwest where she practices the spiritual arts, serves as a freelance writer and editor, and writes poems.
Kailey Tedesco's books These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) and She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications) are both forthcoming. She is the editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical and a performing member of the Poetry Brothel. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart. You can find her work in Bellevue Literary Review, Hello Giggles, UltraCulture, Poetry Quarterly, and more. For more, please visit kaileytedesco.com.
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor, (forthcoming, The Operating System), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works as an editor. One day, she would like to be a silent film star. She is the author of Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and Waiting for the End of the World (Bottlecap Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in dotdotdash, Nano Fiction, LIES/ISLE, and Uphook Press. She can be found at her website.
Monique Quintana is a Xicana writer and the author of the novella, Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). She is an Associate Editor at Luna Luna Magazine and Fiction Editor at Five 2 One Magazine. She has received fellowships from The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, The Sundress Academy of the Arts,and Amplify. She has also been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Micofiction 2020. Her work has appeared in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Winter Tangerine, Grimoire, Dream Pop, Bordersenses, and Acentos Review, among others. You can find her at [www.moniquequintana.com]
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BY I.S. JONES
EVE
I know Death
is the undulating snake below the Great Tree.
Before Truth opened my eyes
I could do nothing but feel—
even the veil that blocked my sight
could never make me ignorant of desire.
I knew of my nakedness—
the snake’s tongue throbbing
for the meat of my thighs.
I am a feral thing; my mouth
a greedy canvas of ripened consequence.
In the garden, I pick fruit & masturbate—
worship myself in the absence of prayer.
The blackberry’s sweet nectar
indistinguishable from my own.
Fingers: blackened Pussy: blackened
Lips the color of shadows.
All day, I dance like a rich woman
let mango drip from my chin.
You don’t know hunger,
a throat relieved of its own drought,
until your teeth tear open the wet heart of the sun
& chew through its shining meat.
I don’t know if I could have broken the snake’s spell—
or rather if I wanted to.
I followed it—sliding & sliding—
through the quiet bend
where stood God’s second head.
I pulled God’s heart down from the branches.
I sunk my teeth through salvation
& climaxed like never before.
I wept & then all the lights of heaven pierced my skull
like a dagger’s epiphany.
I know Death:
it met me at the edge of myself
gave me a new name,
then sent me back.
I woke up naked & wailing in a forest;
the faint caw of life at midday,
flies rest lazily on leaves
as shelter from the coming rain.
OYINBO
I am a spell of six letters.
I have a name that begins & ends two countries.
I am ‘Itiola’: ‘Iti’: ‘the foundation’, ‘the root’.
Ola: ‘cradle of wealth’. English is a meager language.
There is no threshold that can translate me.
No one trusts a name they can’t pronounce.
Call me ‘Stephanie’ because that’s easier.
It’s more American, meaning ‘white’.
I am so articulate; I sound like generational wealth:
the ‘burbs two cars in the driveway
manicured lawns private schools.
Like any good American, I get to complain in English.
Say: American-born Nigerian. Say: Child of Empire.
No one can make sense of what I am:
Yankee. Foreigner. Exotic fruit of the West.
I am the most foreign when I talk about Nigeria
[you don’t get to weep for a country that isn’t yours, selfish American]
I am most White when I talk about America.
I love my country though I’ve seen its hideous face:
When my parents speak in Yoruba & sound like a threat,
when Americans hear my mother’s accent & question her intelligence.
I’m used to this one-sided love, how any Empire too close to the sun
can burn.
ABEL
Baba gave me dominion over all cloven & two-legged animals.
I lift my hands & all living creatures bow.
I stir shadows & creatures plunge headfirst to salvation.
Some of us pick flowers, dream in blue & green,
others do the real work to bring home a heavy feast.
All year long, my people eat like kings.
Look at me, Cain: Baba’s most prized creation.
He made life, but I undress the light
& a village doesn’t go hungry
of the way I put my humanity on a nightstand
to do the vain, hideous things,
what sister, do you know about blood & the way it speaks…?
I remember each upon each—the knuckling, the wordless pleas,
the clean deliverance of blade upon a beast’s neck.
Flesh into flesh.
Every nation under my tending feasts until marrow
until tendon
until muscle
until blood is savior over body.
Let each column of teeth
know its guillotine weight.
Let each hungry mouth know itself to be a brief church.
O sister, praise me for the pity I have shown you
& know when life gives you poverty be grateful life gives you
anything at all.
after Phillip B. Williams
I.S. Jones is a queer American / Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer's Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. She is the 2018 winner of the Brittle Paper Award in Poetry. She is a Book Editor with Indolent Books, Editor at Voicemail Poems, freelances for Complex, Earmilk, NBC News Think, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Kweli Journal, The Rumpus, The Offing, The Shade Journal, and elsewhere. Alongside Nome Patrick Emeka, is she the co-editor of the Young African Poets Anthology. She is a Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship and an MFA candidate in Poetry at UW-Madison.
