A Playlist for Gratitude & Giving Thanks

BY JOANNA VALENTE

In the spirit of the vast holiday season, I made a playlist centered around giving thanks and focusing on gratitude—which are also things we should always be mindful of all throughout the year. Listen below:

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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

Bibliomancy Horoscopes: Divination With Etel Adnan's Poetry

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Books speak to us, create worlds for us, and conjure both the questions and answers that reside within us. When we turn to books and written texts for some greater message, a message from beyond the page, we become literary witches — or bibliomancers. Bibliomancy (which goes by many other names) is the use of books in acts of divination. The goal here is to find greater wisdom, to lean into that Force or Spirit beyond and yet within the page.

Like the ancient practice of sortes (also a form of cleromancy, the use of lots for divination), the practice of divination from drawing a card or other object, bibliomancy has long had a place across cultures and in many folk traditions. Bibliomancers traditionally used the bible for divination, although grimoires and other sacred texts were also used.

According to the University of Michigan’s Romance Languages and Literatures, poetry — how delicious! — was consulted as well. The Dīvān of Ḥāfeẓ, a collection of ghazals written by the great Persian poet Hafiz, was used to seek “Tongue of the Unseen,” or messages via the poet after his death. Today, it’s still common for people to use sacred texts, like the I-Ching or the Bible to divine wisdom.

When we use poetry, of course, there is a technical term for that: Rhapsodomancy. However, bibliomancy seems to cover it for most people.

There’s even a fun intersection of the modern and the ancient over at the Bibliomancy Oracle, a simple webpage that offers up lines of poetry after concentrating and opening a “book” by clicking a button on the site. My poetry has even been included! The site says, “This Oracle selects passages from its database using a random generator. The idea being that meaningful texts are offered via synchronicity. The relevant message finds you. You only need to be open to receiving it.”

I’ve been consulting books for wisdom long before I knew what I was doing. I’d thumb through Bluets by Maggie Nelson or Rumi’s work — seeking wisdom, motivation, a message — and poetry never failed me. I’m sure you’ve done this, too, perhaps subconsciously. Not reading, per se, but seeking. Stumbling upon a stanza. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I began intentionally meditating on a question before selecting a passage and journaling about the line or stanza I’d be directed to upon asking it.

Like tarot or astrology, bibliomancy asks us to lean into the mystery and examine what we’ve been told. What is revealed? What does this revelation ask of us? What sings out when we see the words before us?

In this practice, the reader opens a book, whatever book calls out to them. As a poet, I prefer poetry. The reader then may call out to a guide or spirit to direct them to passage. Then, with eyes closed, the reader selects a page and then selects a line ( at least this is how I do it; although I am secular, so I work with no entity or deity). From there, the given line can be taken as wisdom, an omen, or a sign. Intuit this. Sometimes, people place the book on its spine and let it fall open (this was traditionally done with the bible, according to some research).

Although there are many approaches to bibliomancy, it is best that you create your own approach. Poems offer the most beautiful and mysterious answers to those questions we hold quiet and deep within us, I believe. In their ability to span the liminal parts of the self — the unsaid, the almost-said, the said-between-the-lines — poems offer great wisdom. Perhaps the spirit of the poet is there to direct you as well.

Poems are little written oceans, in which we dive deep, hungry to reach the bottom. Perhaps there is no bottom and that is the answer. Perhaps it’s the journey that matters.

When you let the book fall open, investigate what a line could mean in the context of your life. What images does it bring to mind? How does it make you feel? What does it force you to think about that perhaps you had not before? 

Here, I’ll be doing that for you — for each of the sun signs.

The method: I’ll be opening a poetry book every two weeks and asking for wisdom for each every sign. I will put myself into a receptive, trance-like state (I believe being loose, open, and connected yields the most accurate answers), close my eyes, call out the sign I’m asking about, thumb through the pages of a book, and let my fingers guide me to a line.

It is up to you to reflect the line assigned to your sun sign. Journal about it, meditate on it and listen to the way it reverberates through your mind. Let it stay with you. Write it down and carry it with you.

And at the very least, you’ll discover a new poet.

Our poet is Etel Adnan, and we draw on her book, NIGHT.

Aries

My breathing is a tide. Love doesn’t die.

Taurus

Memory is intelligent. It’s a knowledge seated neighter in the senses, nor the spirit, but in collective memory. It is communal….it helps us rampage through the old self, hang on the certitude that it has to be.

Gemini

What we mean by “God” is that He is night. Reality is night too. From the same night.

Cancer

Words trace their way to the ocean. From the ridge facing this house, signals take off, scaring us, but a large stride, a deep breath, restores tranquility.

Leo

Love creates sand-storms and loosens reality’s building stones. Its feverish energy takes us into the heart of mountains.

Virgo

One day, the sun will not rise at its hour, therefore that won’t be a day. And without a day, there won’t be a night either.

Libra

Are the rockets shooting for the moon killing invisible animals on their way?

Scorpio

Everything I do is memory. Even everything I am.

Sagittarius

Sometimes the sea catches fire.

Capricorn

We create reality by just being. This is also true for the owl who right now is dozing on a branch.

Aquarius

Our mind has a border line with the universe, there, where we promenade, and where tragedy resides.

Pisces

Memory is within us and reaches out, sometimes missing the connection with reality, it's neighbor, its substance.

For more on poetry, divination and magical writing, preorder my forthcoming book, THE MAGICAL WRITING GRIMOIRE.

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine--a digital diary of literature and magical living. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices, as well as the forthcoming book, "The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation & Ritual." She's written for Refinery 29, The New York Times, Self, Chakrubs, Marie Claire, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, Bust, Hello Giggles, Grimoire Magazine, and more. Lisa Marie has taught writing and ritual workshops at HausWitch in Salem, MA, Manhattanville College, and Pace University. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

5 Songs to Get You into the Spirit of Halloween

BY TIFFANY SCIACCA

Halloween is approaching fast and although I always have a list or two of scary movies I plan to watch, I rarely think about music. Of course, there is not as big a catalog for Halloween as for Christmas but you do have the standbys like Bobby Pickett’s, Monster Mash or Ministry’s, Every Day is Halloween, though I am more partial to Siouxsie and The Banshees, Peek-A-Boo myself. I decided to explore a bit and found five songs to add to your Halloween playlist.

First, we have a band recommended to me through my YouTube recommendations. Formed in 1982, Saâda Bonaire was intended as a disco/world music band fronted by Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld. They were destined to have at least one hit single, “You Could Be More As You Are” but their A&R man grossly went over budget for Tina Turner’s, Private Dancer as well Saâda Bonaire’s debut album and EMI refused to release the single, pushing the group into obscurity. My introduction to them was, Shut the Door (1983) a nice jazz fusion song you would think was almost too bouncy to tie in with Halloween but then when the vocals start it quickly sounds like a song you’d find on the soundtrack of Vamp or The Hunger .

The second tune is familiar to most of us I think. Spooky (1967) was originally an instrumental song by Mike Sharpe and only later were lyrics added. More than 30 artists from Lydia Lunch to Andy Williams have covered it and I’m going to share the two that were unfamiliar to me.

The first version is by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. It definitely has that signature sound with the Vandellas adding the appropriate backdrop making it a perfectly dark and sultry song with Martha taking lyrical liberties like, “Love is kind of crazy with a spooky old lady like me.”

The second cover of Spooky is by the interesting trio of Joan Osborne, Isaac Hayes, and Dave Sanborn. This video was produced at Studio 5, NYC in 1997 for David Sanborn & Friends, The Super Session. There is a little playful banter at the beginning, but then it sticks close to the best known version by the Classics IV with lyrics alluding to a “spooky little girl.”

Another oldie but goodie, I Put a Spell On You, was supposed to be the perfect love song. “What do you mean Tiffany?” You ask, “It is a perfect love song!” Well the versions we hear now, like Nina Simone’s are more than convincing, but the original version which was written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was recorded after a large meal consisting of too much alcohol and the final project was not the pristine song familiar to the 1950s and was banned for some time. Here is a later version but you will still get the picture, definitely has that Halloween vibe. You are welcome!

The last on the list is Eartha Kitt’s, I Want to Be Evil released in 1953 on the album, That Bad Eartha, and with lines like, “… whatever I've got, I'm eager to lose” and “The the closest I've been to a bar is at ballet class.” I Want to Be Evil” is just as fun as Monster Mash but with sharper lyrics. I hope you enjoy these 5 spooky songs as much as I did and if you have any to add, please let me know!

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Tiffany Sciacca (senior staff) is a writer who has recently moved to Sicily from the Midwest. Tiffany’s work has appeared in the Silver Birch Press, SOFTBLOW, and DNA Magazine UK. When she is not learning a new language or trying to blend in, she is reading old poetry anthologies, binging Nordic Noir or of course, writing.

3 Poems by I.S. Jones

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

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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.