Poetry by Jeannine M. Pitas

BY JEANNINE M. PITAS

June 24

Feast of St. John the Baptist

Today my head has been removed,
traded for a jug of wine, a pluck
of the lyre, a young girl's careless
dance. In Orthodox icons I hold
myself on a platter; faithful ones
bend forward to kiss. I never knew
this was the price of living
on locusts and wild honey, for preparing
my cousin the carpenter's way. Today the light 
begins its slow death; I know 
I will rise again. In two thousand years, a girl
who bears my name will dance
around a bonfire, surrounded by old men and women, 
tiniest children, dancers on stilts, young 
girls in white dresses with ivy crowns. 
She will whirl and whirl, dizzyingly dance, 
exalting in her own beauty.
The price will be her head.
A man she thought she loved
will smash her into a wall
and her head will fall off.
She will pick it up, carry it in
a backpack or purse while a replacement
is painted over the space. Years later, again
on my day, she will sit on a bench on Aliki Peninsula
beside the marble ruins of a basilica
made in my cousin's name. 
She will look at the columns and archways, watch 
summer's highest, brightest light fall
on the olive trees. I will come to her,
take her hand. When I wipe away 
the painted face, she will open 
her purse and hold out to me
the torn head she still holds. My cousin
will come to help me. We will lift it, 
place it on her shoulders, suture that wound 
as all the scarved women
lighting candles before Orthodox icons
have done for me. We will help her
to her feet, beckon her to join us
in our search for others 
who've lost their heads.

Wings of Desire

An angel whispers to readers in the library.
He's tired of everyone wanting something different.

A trapeze artist dressed like an angel
doesn't know that real angels are wingless.

I wait for my photo at the machine
and emerge with another face.

This is the world of one-shoed walkers
who shade themselves with borrowed umbrellas,

sign their names with dropped pens,
open doors with lost keys.

Stones come alive. Time can't heal. 
No, time's the illness.

The first strands of grey hair. An old photo album.
The lost storyteller, lost peace. 

The blue ocean, sky. Afternoon coffees. 
Cuban cigars. Dragons. The bed.

The world that shrinks to the size of a room.
The choir of young women who come to sing.

The grass tall enough to hide
or make love in.

The deep river you didn't find hard to cross
because your beloved was waiting on the other side.

An  immortal singer turned organ grinder,
ignored or mocked. 

Abandoned railroad tracks. The other side.
The crucifix hanging from the classroom wall.

The plaid uniform your grandmother starched.
The borders. The country with as many states

as there are citizens. Rags pledged to each morning,
folded each afternoon. Shibboleths.

Barbed wire. Private security guards.
The world in color. Sunsets, lonely rooms.

Cherry cough drops. A nurse's kind face.
Your bed. The lamp turned off. 

Panic 

I met Pan when I was 21. It's said he, god of shepherds, can be found in mountain fields, but I encountered him on my college campus, in a hidden quad behind a stone building with icicles dangling from the roof, tiny daggers. It was winter. He came alone. He struck me with his staff and gave me altitude; my insides crumpled like autumn's last falling leaf, shriveled as a sheet of ice hit my shoulder. I lay there. The snow shone gold; the treetops blazed, but no voice emerged from within them, no all-important “I am.” Just the opposite: “I am not.” This is not me. I shook and saw a strange aura around myself, a halo of gold and green. Rats and mice nipped my toes; the ground opened to reveal sharp rocks waiting to tear me into sinews and blood. Beneath them a blue sea waited to caress me and not let me go, beauty and terror both much too close. At last he turned away. It took a few minutes to trust he wouldn't be back. The mountain flattened; the blazing trees regained their green. In the distance I heard the bells of sheep, their gentle bleating. A blue sky entered my insides. I stood; I could feel the halo still around me. I could still smell the aroma of meadows after winter's melting, of soft trilliums drinking the sun between the branches of skeletal trees; I could taste the first mint leaves. Lush pastures rolled through my stomach; my heart broke into cumulus clouds; pink mimosa flowers sprung from my hands. My lungs were filled with the blueness of early spring.

Jeannine M. Pitas is a poet, teacher, and Spanish-English literary translator. Originally from Buffalo, New York, she has called many places home: Montevideo, Krakow, Managua, Toronto, and most recently Dubuque, Iowa, where she has resided since 2015. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Our Lady of the Snow Angels (2012) and A Place to Go (2015), both published by Lyricalmyrical Press in Toronto, and thank you for dreaming (2018), published by Lummox Press in 2018. Her translation for four books by acclaimed Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio was published as I Remember Nightfall by Ugly Duckling Presse and shortlisted for the 2018 National Translation Award. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Things Seen and Unseen, is forthcoming from Oakville, Ontario-based Mosaic Press. She teaches literature, writing, and Spanish at the University of Dubuque.

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You’re Supposed to Drown Witches by Nikkin Rader

BY NIKKIN RADER

You’re supposed to drown witches

But sometimes their gramarye is too strong
or because they can fructify, you salt their roots
what spells can be mussitated or what cities can be clogged by a nimbus
or aura too bright, why birds ululate in the morning
A daymare rising to breeze as if summerfruit or floral berrying,
slicing thru even the gravid among us, incogitant in its mechanizing ruth
To suffer them a living is a damning offense, before a lashing at wooded phallus
forest infertile in their soil by fire
A terror on gender and sucking into vortex, its evil sighting,
to be marked by deviling mammary ridge
a press for paper to burn

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Nikkin Rader has degrees in poetry, anthropology, philosophy, gender & sexuality studies, and other humanities and social science. Her works appear in Drunk Monkeys, Coalesce Zine, Perfectly Normal Magazine, the sad bitch chronicles, Silk + Smoke, Recenter Press, Occulum, Pussy Magic, and elsewhere. You can follow her twitter or insta @wecreeptoodeep

Poetry by Danielle Rose

BY DANIELLE ROSE

Variations on Drawing Down the Moon


it is about drawing things in. i want

to be tree-roots / & lightning

striking an open field.

how first i open myself like the face

of the moon / so that i become

the face of the moon.

& into me flows the face of the moon.

goddess / descend into me

through me into the earth.

it is about remaining open like how

i want to be tree-roots / to hold

you both hopeful & ashamed

that i may be unfaithful / i imagine

that i am tree leaves & they

drink in the moonlight

& into me flows the hungry moon.

goddess / projection / demon 

whatever just enter me now.

this is how you drink

divinity / & perhaps why 

tides swell. in both there is dancing.

arms toward the sky / you drink god

then she seeps out again.

this must be how

we can bear to be so empty / so

we can be so full / so we can be tree-root

drawing ourselves into the moon.

On Dancing

these are the skills i never quite understood / the idea of celebration 

like a trip to the dentist / i understand how out of place i am 

awkward everything elbows & shoulders / awful at blowing out candles 

& my wishes were just beads of sweat a sudden dampness 

a stumble / because this was how i was taught to dance 

to step on others’ toes / but i am not awaiting extradition

i am learning how to belong to where i am / because this is the way a sewing needle 

becomes a sword / & how i stitch together myself a dance 

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Danielle Rose lives in Massachusetts with her partner and their two cats. She is the managing editor of Dovecote Magazine and used to be a boy.

Poetry by Laura Paul

BY LAURA PAUL

Laura Paul is a writer living in Los Angeles. Previously, her work has been published by the Brooklyn Rail, Coffin Bell Journal, Entropy Magazine, FIVE:2:ONE, Shirley Magazine, Soft Cartel, Touring Bird, and featured at the West Hollywood Book Fair and Los Angeles Zine Fair. She is the author of Entropy's monthly astrology column, Stars to Stories, and since June 2018 she's been filming a weekly video series of her poetry at poemvideo.com. She was raised in Sacramento, earned her B.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle, and her Master's from UCLA where she was the recipient of the 2011 Gilbert Cates Fellowship. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @laura_n_paul.

MIDSOMMAR’S Hårgalåten and the Ritual of Dance

BY MARY KAY MCBRAYER

*SPOILERS*

I have to confess something about Ari Aster’s new movie Midsommar: I did not identify with or even like Dani until she chose to set her boyfriend on fire. Before you judge me as a vindictive arsonist/murderer, hear me out. Most of my re-alignment with the protagonist is because of the ritual of dance.

via GIPHY

I have been a dancer for all of my life—one of my earliest memories is being in a pink leotard at three years old and hearing my instructor say, “If you ever lose your place, just listen to the music. It will tell you where you are.” She meant that we should listen to the counts to situate ourselves in the choreography, but I didn’t take it that way, not even then. There’s something really special about being able to lose yourself in a piece of music, especially when the music is live. It shuts off the rest of your brain and makes you live in your body, and you kind of forget everything that is happening if it isn’t the dance. And when you finish dancing, everything falls in its place.

I remember at one convention I went to, the keynote speaker (Donna Mejia) asked the crowd, “How many of you feel like you are wasting time when you’re dancing? That you should be doing something else?” Nearly everyone raised her hand. “Now, how many of you are only truly happy when you’re dancing?” I did not see a single hand go down.

Sure, it sounds like a lot of existential gibberish if you haven’t experienced it—but let me ask this, more relatable question: have you ever been drunk and lost yourself on the dance floor of the club? (Look at me in the face and tell me you have never suddenly heard the end of a Prince song and realized you were grinding on a stranger in the corner. LOOK ME IN THE EYE. And tell me that.) My point is, when we hear someone is a dancer, we think they are a performer, but that is not necessarily the purpose of dance, not spiritually, and not in Midsommar.

via GIPHY

Another confession: most of my dance training is in Middle Eastern dance, which is very different from Swedish dance, but the folk music and dance, and the purposes of it, are not necessarily THAT different. For example, belly dancing originated with women dancing for and with other women. There was no one watching. There was no audience. Everyone danced. It was a form of community. It’s the same community you feel dancing in the kitchen in your pajamas with a couple of close friends. That feeling, the one of being among your friends and doing your hoeish-est dance with a spatula in one hand is the BEST, and it’s what we see in Midsommar with the Hårgalåten. In my experience, that’s when you really start dancing, when you forget that people are watching, listen to the music, and express it in your physicality.

When women dance like that, we don’t care what we look like because no one is supposed to be watching. If they are watching, they don’t stop dancing to do it. And that’s powerful. No one is watching me. Everyone is dancing with me. I am dancing with everyone. No one is watching me, and I don’t care what I look like. (Great performers are the ones who harness this and utilize it onstage, even though there ARE people watching.) You can see the moment that Dani realizes the happiness that come with the May Day dance in Midsommar. It is the first time she smiles in the whole film.

So many of us, too, think that dancing is about the viewer, but it just isn’t. Not on a fundamental level. Sure, dance can be a performance, but that, to me, is not its purpose, and it’s definitely not the purpose of the movie Midsommar’s dance sequence. To me, the purpose of the whole May Day/May Queen dance around the May Pole is to show Dani her true family.

via GIPHY

These women embrace her, they let her be a part of their dance community, and that’s so powerful—I’ll never forget the first time a dancer pulled me into the circle of a folk dance. It was magic. I, like Dani, glanced away a couple times to see if anyone was watching.

She wants Christian to be watching, but he isn’t. It seems like she EXPECTS to be sad that he is not paying attention, but then her dancing becomes even more joyful, more spiritual. (You can see this emotional fortitude, though not joy specifically, in spiritual dance rituals around the world, from the Whirling Dervishes in Turkey to the Moribayasa dance in Guinea to the May Day Hårgalåten celebration in the movie Midsommar.)

In the Hårgalåten, the women ARE having fun, though. Though it’s a competition, they are not really competing. Or at least they are not competing with each other. 

In the folktale of Hårgalåten, the devil disguised himself as a fiddler and played a tune so compelling that all the women in Hårga danced until they died. In the version that Midsommar tells, the dance ritual is a reenactment of that myth. The women knock each other down because they’re shrooming so hard they run into each other when the music changes. They aren’t mad, though, when they fall. They tumble down, laughing, and roll out of the path of the remaining dancers. The last one standing, one of the villagers says to Dani, is the May Queen.

The May Queen, in the context of the film, has some pretty dark and ominous foreshadowing around her. I assumed, at the first appearance of that archetype, that the May Queen would be sacrificed, and I think that is what the film wants us to assume. That is not, however, what happens, and I was glad of it. (So much of this film is not what I expected it to be, and that is a delight among formulaic horror movies.) 

via GIPHY

Even the song of the Hårga is told from the first person plural, the “we” of the dancers. They are all invested in the ritual. If one of them wins, they all win. When Dani is the last dancer standing, her new family celebrates with her. They are there for her when she grieves her boyfriend, too.

I love the ending of Midsommar because I feel like Dani really comes into her own; it’s the first time she’s had agency or presented with a choice, in my opinion, throughout the film. As you know, the May Queen is not sacrificed as many of us likely intuited: instead, she’s lifted on a platform and carried to her flower throne. She follows the sounds of another ritual though her now-sisters advise her against it. They go with her anyway. She sees her boyfriend having sex with someone else. She hyperventilates. Her new family is there, with her, breathing with her and comforting her in an empathy so physical it’s uncomfortable to the viewer.

Then, Dani discovers that the May Queen gets to choose the final sacrifice, from between Christian and a member of her new family. She chooses her boyfriend.

Here’s the thing, though: I don’t think she chooses him because he’s “cheating” on her. That ritual, to me, is absolutely a rape, for one. That Christian has a terrible time at the festival is a gross understatement, but the thing to remember is that Christian was shitty way before they came to Sweden, and Dani, like so many women complacent in their relationships, women clinging to a dysfunctional relationship because the rest of their world has crashed, women set adrift from the world, clings to him like a life raft, even though he will not keep her afloat. 

During the dance, Dani finds support, love, joy, and that is (in my interpretation of the competition) why she wins. It’s not until she finds that community in Hårga, specifically in the dance with the other women, that she can release the last tether to her unhappiness and set him on fire. 

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Mary Kay McBrayer is a belly-dancer, horror enthusiast, sideshow lover, and literature professor from south of Atlanta. Her book about America’s first female serial killer is forthcoming from Mango Publishing, and you can hear her analysis (and jokes) about scary movies on her blog and the podcast she co-founded, Everything Trying to Kill You.

She can be reached at mary.kay.mcbrayer@gmail.com.