MAAT SUITE BY GARETT STRICKLAND

DOT

I.

[ The madness I make does it like ]

                          [ THIS ]

is where enters
the night’s worst phase                                                              walking on one’s mother

Remembering the encounter of the book the gestation of it as a blind object the potencies hidden
within herein lies mysteries     the impatience in that desire to know that deep loving want of to be
able to be known by it     and even in the un-understanding in the understanding of knowing it as
it was written     thru pores  →  an unstoppable train     this language as seepage a seepage of
language as the age sees its page in the page of disks sick reference bro you are my brother as
this word     the same the same this homonym this home breathing in in unity and then again
again to be untied and once then more united on and on and     [ a mother does her twin sons in
the steamroom and they are not shy of each other ]     read into a tape already looped it builds a
nest     ( wow mom wow mom wow )  and into another such womb are we all the more
enveloped     a deferment of form     cabin’d in ain soph     thirsty for the outside     the madness
of the day     the nonsense of the moment     [ a diagram of the essential mystification ]     reveals
nothing in the manner that one cannot measure momentum-slash-position     a concentric
cube,     this calendar

II.

"Nothing quenches my step."
André du Bouchet

Designer time signatures
for rent

for bread     light or bust

worry required to keep
hungry

and qualified

thoughtforms all lined up
and nailed to a board

to admire or play
another game of darts at

carve
tonight’s password

into the wood
of our booth because we’re sitting in it and sitting down

can be
a way of loving

something, us

let this be enough
desire
blown out

as an eyelash
into flame

so forceful
so majestic

certain
declarative & willing

to be wrong

"And nothing will be yours except a movement
toward a where that is whereless."
Alejandra Pizarnik

LINE

Ticket
processional

shame parsed
you

whittled person
reenacts

a holocaustian
or bad face

afternoon deprived
of pivot’s distance

yogic piss
on charred glass

piloting
scorched orchards

Savaging thru a
bag

it’s showtime
overtaken

with the
emoticon

of infinite intimacy
with abjection

& you other
havable joy

King size
unbarterable

delusion

a kindness
not yet

knock’d
up faerie folk

on cellar shelves
in middle basements

striking
off planet poses
drinking

all the best
potions we’d

forget     yet

Isle
engine

how you heard

longing
close      or on top

fathoms
from

yr hood

secret  ed
inside

tee shirt thin
lyrics

and the hum
of apt pipes

in the wall
we met

this for

Leashed
crickets

piston out blues

antenna turnt
to oblivion sis

caught lulling
forcing

to expression
a street

sign
full

of holes in a rut

we
made

out
in

all summers
from now

on

This slow out of tune
accumulation

of haircuts     of hedonism

and the shape a mouth makes
in sabotage

to our regularly
scheduled      desk&vessel

does a madness
so nice     so good

in the project our light cleans
of weekends

There is no approach
in presence

I am at the extreme
of this thing here    I am

& your dream makes
the pocket round

for echoing day

---

GARETT STRICKLAND is the editor of .PLINTH., ICHNOS, and other publications of the Unwin-Dunraven Literary Ecclesia. He is the author of a long-poem, WHOA DONT CARE (Jerkpoet, 2015), and UNGULA (forthcoming from Solar▲Luxuriance). He’s an ordealist.

Poetry By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

PAPER DOLL CHAIN

Girls folded in upon girl and
another girl, holding hands of paper

a mask of thick mascara, eye-
liner, owling their eyes

paper dolls for play, holding
hands and repeating
thoughts, solo boats set afloat

by boys and men, pushed
farther still by the white world.

How to anchor except by holding hands with other
girls, girls to size and compare,

how their edges crease or fold more than
yours, how you want that too. That rusty anchor

in my best friend, which I hold onto,
its breast shape and weighted steady

as she practices her hand-smother and the gentle crush
of me. How else are we to prepare for the Mexican boys

now roaming the hallways, their arms
a hanging hook around some brown girl's neck?

Girls wanting to know
what it takes be a woman, how much to erase.

The rubber tip leaving no mark
left of a girl in a woman set inside the body of a man

or a boy. For now, it's a game of that blow
she knows is coming. I let her teach

it to me, practice and practice the art of being
inside other bodies, hers and then his
and his, all those brown, white,

red red bodies.
Never mine.

ANIMAL LIFE

Those black-beat wings. A rustle in my chest, those balled fist-of-hearts beating like lit
bulbs that click on and off, secret spark.       Too many people move about, waist deep in
swamp stench, the doors of buildings breaking into dark waters.     No matter to them.
Their bodies glide like liquid, agile, part of this covering up and over.           So, hide, little
warriors of fur, blood-rimmed eyes staining the night, the quiet blinking, the barely
breath. Hide to live amid these bloated houses, straining to contain all its things,
cosmetics and laced-up shoes and plastic toys that constantly sing. Because everything
sings, constantly, a radio tune that no one wants to hear but keeps on playing. Those can't
keep my hands to myselfs, those go love yourselves.   A smothered piano, a cello, a
symphony, in the tight muscle around my lungs, beating into me like my own bright
blood. I cannot live here if I don't save this hush, this furious sound.

HEADLONG

On the photograph "Pleasure and Terrors of Levitation," by Aaron Siskind

Headlong, body-long
spun into air--
a white man containing a woman
containing her crippled
walk, her brown body,
in his limbs, that whip-shaped
hair. He carries
her freedom in his levity,
that will to never fall to earth,
to be held buoyant by nothing
but air and belief in his own brilliance.
O, to be that light,
and to still be weighted
by the body's core of muscles,
bone and tissues, toughing its way
through sinew and blood to move
and be seen, to be allowed to be
a body that moves through the world
at will, that flock of black birds
crashing through the sky
of white starlight. Not
this life of boxes within boxes
within boxes--

Let me be that. Let all women
and girls, men and boys,
be that, stretching their bodies
along the sun-track to God,
not caring how many times
we fall apart and break,
that fall-apart dance so familiar
to us all. All those beautiful broken
spines lined up to make a ladder
to find what is missing.

---

Leslie Contreras Schwartz  is a Mexican-American writer of Maya descent, and a third-generation Houstonian. Her first collection of poetry, Fuego, was published by St. Julian Press in March 2016. She writes poetry, essays, and fiction about the lives of women and girls, particularly as survivors of bodily and psychic trauma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Hermeneutic Chaos, Tinderbox Literary Journal, Houston Chronicle, Catapult, and more. She lives in Houston with her husband and three children.

Dark Water

BY ABBY SHEAFFER

Avalon, CA

El Galleon

November 28th, 1981

11:30pm

The silence sliced through the air.

“You what?”

Their booth was dark, lit only by the undulating glow of mahogany votive candles in hurricane glass.

Lana felt her mouth go dry.

“I… fucked… your… wife…”

Timothy said it in his usual, measured tone, and in this particular light (beneath the garish décor of the restaurant) Lana felt disgusted at the salmon-like features of his face.

A cold hand crept up her thigh and she looked between each man to determine whose it was, but the weed had kicked in and the maritime sculptures seemed to drip their gold-leaf paint. The sculpture of a mermaid from the bow of a ship smiled mockingly.

Her eyes darted to Richie whose face was plastered with his perfect, Hollywood grin.

“Pardon?” he asked, between girded teeth.

“You heard me,” Timothy hissed.

She gripped the base of her wine glass.

Richie spoke in a whisper, “fuck you,” he hissed.

She felt overcome with a cold sweat, and quickly exited the booth. She forgot how she reached the sand of the pier, only mildly reawakening as she reached into her clutch to retrieve her cigarettes and lighter. Her scarlet nails, like talons, glistened under the streetlamps of the secluded island’s main road. The moon was just a sliver, just a hint of rock buried beneath the unremitting obsidian of the universe.

She caught her breath.

You could not see the mainland from here.

*

Burbank, CA

Three Weeks Earlier…

 "No, I miss the feel of it, of taking a risk… you had no idea what it was like to work with him.”

“The late great…”

“American rebel…”

They said in drunken unison.

Lana had surprised herself by ordering a glass of her favorite white burgundy. She’d surprised herself by coming out, alone, after filming with Timothy when Richie was back home with the girls.

 “So, now,” Timothy began in his usual tone, “what do you think of this film?”

Lana laughed, and unconsciously began tinkering with her diamond earring. The lights of the restaurant seemed to brighten.

“It’s good, it’s okay… certainly not the Hollywood I wantto keep being a part of…”

“Well, it’s uh… ‘Sci-Fi’, figure out the neuroses of your lover or what it’s like to fuck someone without fucking them…” he added for her.

“Are you doing it method style?” Lana asked.

“No, why?”  he replied.

She bit her lip and cracked her neck. Clearing her throat, she spoke.

“You know… uh… I don’t know if you know this about Richie…”

And leaning in, she whispered in his ear.

Timothy shifted toward her in his seat, closing his arm around her. Lifting the blade of his fingertip to the silk of her wrap dress, he grazed her collarbone.

She closed her eyes, lifted her head back.

Saw the blackness.

*

Santa Barbara, CA

November 24th, 1981

9am

Lana woke up to see Svetlana standing over her bed, sniffling back tears.

“Honey? Sweetie? What is it?”

The child wouldn’t respond, only shuddering. She was skinny, all knobby knees and long hair.

“Shh… honey, what is it?”

“Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”

“Svetlana, what’s the matter?”

“DON’T GO!”

Her request was so loud that Richie jumped into the room, his face covered in shaving cream.

“What’s the matter?”

Svetlana only shook her head, clinging to her mother.

*

Avalon, CA

August 28th, 1981

4pm

“What would you do if you knew how you were going to die?”

“Lana, what the hell?” Midge asked, lifting herself up from the hood of the yacht (her Bloody Mary sloshed recklessly over the salted rim of her glass).

“When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me stories that gypsies told her… when she first came to America…”

Midge felt a chill through her spine despite the oppressive glow of the sun.

“And what the hell did a couple gypsies have to say?”

Lana turned over on her side, sliding off her sunglasses.

“You have no idea, Midge, they could see everything. They used to read tarot cards with chilling accuracy and scryblack mirrors: shards of black glass that could see the future.”

“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

The tide picked up and the buoy of the yacht began to bang against the harbor.

Lana said nothing, only getting up on her knees to tighten the rope.

Midge noticed, chillingly, how her delicate little hands loosened and secured the fraying rope.

“You’re kind of reminding me of Kim Novak in Vertigoright now…” Midge murmured.

Lana stared into the blackness of the water.

“Imagine, no one being able to hear you… not even your own husband…”

“Honey,” Midge’s voice cracked, “honey, Richie loves you!”

Lana looked at her for a moment, but her face was drained of expression.

“How are you two bathing beauties doing?”

Midge looked up to see Richie standing and holding two champagne flutes, his All-American grin glinting in the California sun.

“Anyone up for some champagne?”

Midge looked between them.

“Of course!” she yelled, with some relief.

Lana moved away from the buoy and lukewarmly toward her husband.

*

Avalon, CA

November 29th, 1981

12:01am

The muffled sound of arguing and lapping water filtered through the yacht. Timothy sat drunkenly in his bunker, while the skipper lit another joint. The tangy, furry scent of weed filled the cabin.

“Can I have a hit?” Timothy asked, “I don’t like to drink like that,” he said, and absent-mindedly waved his hands as if to imply the night’s raucousness.

The skipper extended his hand, offering the quickly burning joint.

“Hollywood man, it fucks you up.”

“Tell me about it,” Timothy brought the joint to his lips and looked up, “listen to the way he talks to her.”

As he was wont to do, the skipper watched as Timothy brought his right hand in front of himself and began to gesticulate, bobbing his head in his signature fashion.

“The man hates his own wife because of her success, hates her…” he placed the joint to his lips and sucked it in.

Exhaling he gave it back to the skipper.

“I think it’s the system,” Timothy continued, squatting down, “you know his secret, don’t you?”

The skipper hesitated and shook his head. Timothy pierced him with his gaze before responding:

“Then why is your cock so hard?”

*

Avalon, CA

November 29th, 1981

12:13am

She was comfortable in her long, old fashioned nightgown and quilted parka, though she knew by the look on the men’s face it was not how they were used to seeing her, only the skipper seemed to see who she was beyond her conflated persona.

“They always expect Butterfield8 and get disappointed when I wear this,” she mumbled, lighting a cigarette.

He shrugged.

“So you want me to take you back on the island?” he asked,his hands shoved in pockets.

Lana exhaled and breathed out into the brisk, indigo air.

“Please, I can’t stand being around him when he gets like this. I do one major motion picture without him and he turns into some… fucking…”

And she frowned, the two delicate wrinkles on her forehead suddenly aging her, like two parentheses they reflected what she couldn’t say out loud.

She coughed.

“You know, I read the same shit about Vivien Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier…”

The skipper just nodded, “want me to bring you some more of your wine?”

“No,” she shook emphatically, “I’ve had more than enough. I just want to go sleep and forget tonight.”

“Your perfume smells nice,” he said.

“Thanks, Claire DuBois gave it to me when I was a littlegirl. I’ve worn it ever since.”

“Gardenia, is it?” the skipper asked.

“Yes, they’re my favorite flower,” she replied.

They got into the rubber dinghy and moved toward the island. He noted an erratic tension in her body whenever it slapped against the dark water. She gripped her parka.

“I don’t like water much,” she said, her voice tiny as a child’s.

*

San Bernardino, CA

Summer 1949

5:00pm

“Well then, I’ll teach you how to swim!” Jimmy said, splashing the water.

“Jimmy, darling, I’m crazy about you, but I have a thing about water…” Lana sat at the edge of her swimming pool, a toe dangling at the edge, “I’m serious, this is about all I can do.”

She watched as Jimmy dove under and rose up again, his swim trunks blossoming up around him in a completely comical way.

“So your mom’s setting you up on one of those shitty Hollywood dates again?” he moved his lips to the side, as if tasting what he said, as if that could subdue the jealous nature of his tone.

Lana looked up at him and nodded.

“Of course, she doesn’t approve of me, but she approves of Blockhead Turner…”

“Brock Turner!” she stifled a laugh, but Jimmy didn’t take.

A rush of emotions constricted her throat and a second lens imbued her eyes.

“Oh, Jimmy, you know there’s only me for you.”

He swam toward her and she grazed the afternoon stubble on his face.

“Miss Movie Star… soon you’ll marry some Hollywood Big Shot and move into Bel Air and forget all about your little…your little farm boy…”

“Never,” she murmured and then she felt her thigh slide deeply beneath the cerulean and sun dappled waters of the pool. Standing on the balls of her feet, she let him swirl her around, always trusting his waist around hers.

The evening sun glowed and for a moment, she forgot everything; her omnipresent litany of fears seemed to dissolve away into the aquamarine depths, forgotten if just for a moment.

*

Beverly Hills, CA

The Derby

Winter 1952

She let the mink stole slide down her porcelain shoulder and suggestively asked for a martini.

“Dry, no olives, and an ashtray please,” the waiter gaped. Quickly, a busboy brought an ostentatious marble ashtray and set it on the white tablecloth between some equally ostentatious filigreed candlestick holders.

“Tonight, tonight, you meet Richard White!”

Her mother’s husky Russian drawl beat in her ears. As a child, she’d always had a crush on Richard White. He had a recurring war as an All-American war hero, with an All-American grin, and was an All-American heartbreaker. Her entire childhood had been spent with cutout pictures of him over her bed, celluloid fantasies of a perfect marriage.

But then there was Jimmy…

(Mama put a stop to that)

“You are IN Hollywood, you MARRY Hollywood. No exceptions! He is below you!”

Endless nights spent with her older sister Sofia, crying into her pillow, wringing it out in the morning.

Then a bargain was met, and the summer after the romance ended, she cultivated a new persona: a femme fatale. Racy photo shoots, coiffed pixie hair reminiscent of Lila Porter, bold and sumptuous lipstick, opera gloves, mink and sable, late nights with bachelors-about-town, and worst of all—compromises on casting couches with men old enough to be her father.

If the world had held a modicum of innocence, it was lost to her now. Sipping her martini (too much vermouth) she looked up. Extended a gloved hand, posed as if taking a studio still.

“Richard, how are you!”

(A smile so handsome it could stop your heart)

Was that what she’d recited as a little girl?

My, how times change…

*

Avalon, CA

El Galleon

November 28th, 1981

9pm

“You don’t carry that wine here?” Lana asked, dipping her head in disbelief.

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, but we have a killer martini!” the waitress straightened her posture, as if a martini were a landmark feat.

Haphazardly, she agreed and dug into her pack of cigarettes.

“Same,” Richie said, bringing a hand to his wife’s shoulder.

“I’ll have an Old Fashioned,” Timothy said, “or a scotch.”

“Ok,” the waitress said, scanning her pad, “Be right with you!”

Lana inhaled her cigarette and moved herself away from Richie. Beneath the table, she felt Timothy’s hand began to seek the cap of her knee.

“So,” Timothy asked, “you two come here often?”

Richie lit a cigarette, “only since we were married!” Then he corrected himself, “oh, I mean our first marriage, right darling?” He fiddled with his ascot.

Lana smiled, “you’re correct!” she said (a maudlin grin pasted over her face). The waitress brought the drinks over and Lana spied a bottle of champagne on the tray.

“Oh,” the waitress said upon seeing Lana’s curious eyes, “from that family over there! They’re huge fans of Miss Winter.”

Richie gauged her oblivious gaze, “and, of course, you Mr. White!”

Timothy reveled in his relative anonymity.

“To Hollywood!” he said, raising his chilled flute.

The glasses clinked.

*

Avalon, CA

Between Caverns

November 29th, 1981

1am

So this is what it feels like. To feel suspended above some ominous, dark water. To never see the bottom, to float.

And she had screamed, but Richie’s jeering had been callous. And for a moment, she thought she heard another man and woman yell out, but then the water began to fill her lungs.

 (Startlingly frigid, like pins and needles)

Her nightgown and quilted red parka ballooned around her initially, but then the water began to drag her down.

To be at gravity’s mercy, and to feel some force greater than you allow you to float before it consumes you.

She tried to remember the feeling of being with Jimmy in the little pool, but then wretched fear caressed her ankles tempting her to just give in.

 "Richie!” she had cried, but the caverns swallowed her call and laughed at her with a menacing grin, their jagged stone columns formed centuries ago.

He thought it had been so funny.

(Throw your cheating wife from a boat, see if she’ll float!)

He’d done it by pitching her over the bow, and she’d clung on at first but began to slip. The chilly, November air had tickled her legs and her toes began to freeze. All the same, she began to sweat profusely and that was when the revelation hit.

*

Zakharenko Residence

San Bernardino, CA

December 5th, 1945

8:30pm

“Mama! Mama!”

Svetlana Zakharenko screams from her bed. Under the winter moonlight, the undulating shadows from her billowing curtains look like monsters. Flanked by stuffed animals and paper dolls, Svetlana screams out again.

The hinges of her bedroom door open and in steps Mama.She is tiny and possesses a beady stare. All-knowing Mother.

 "Was it the dream again?” she asks, in her husky, Russian growl.

 "Yes! Yes! The water! The water! It was so dark and cold! Mama, please stop it!”

And then there was a loud clap, and Svetlana’s cheek burned, and she knew she’d been slapped.

Shock set in.

“Go back to bed! Rehearsal in the morning!” her eyes were wild and dark with anger, Svetlana flinched in terror.

Mama seemed to smile with pride.

 “Remember, you are not longer Svetlana Zakharenko, you are Lana Winters.”

The bedroom door closed.

*

Epilogue

Tranquility and terror circled through her like a snake consuming its own tail. It got to the point where her arms and legs could tread no more and the unbearable weightlessness of it all became so heavy.

A cop fished her out and recoiled when he found the livid bruises on the side of her face. The frigid husk of skin and fabric clung to her lifeless form. Her dark brown eyes begged for answers.

Then they found the mountains of empty liquor bottles.

Later, the skipper would stay at Richie’s house for three and a half months, living off a steady diet of rum and painkillers.

Timothy would go on to become an actor with a cult following, adored for his candor and the measured and strange vocal delivery. 

The predawn morning of November 29th was the last time Richie slept well.

---

Abby Sheaffer is the finger and founder and editor-in-chief of Chicago Literati and The Vignette Review. Her fiction has been published in Bird's Thumb, Bluestockings, Crab Fat, Danes Macabre, and Literary Orphans.  

Interview with The Love Witch's Anna Biller: "I like to construct an alternate reality with cinema"

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

When I watched The Love Witch for the first time, I was fucking floored. Here was this aesthetically gorgeous, feminist, totally nuanced, witchcraft-focused, super kitschy, sexual, glamorous, dark piece of cinema — directed by a woman.

Before I watched it, I realized most people buzzing about it on social media had nothing but absolute praise for it. It's not like any film I've ever seen — and it requires a viewer to let go and just fall into its beauty and the binaries it presents around feminism and patriarchal brainwash. I also felt it was high-time a movie deal with witchcraft in a way that didn't involve overtly goth dress and changing hair colors for fun (looking at you, The Craft), wiggling noses, or inaccurate mixups with Satanist ideologies.

I also know that the director Anna Biller (who is also the production designer, editor, producer, composer, and costume designer), took her time to study witchcraft, which makes it so delicious. I was honored to be able to speak with Anna Biller — about how much I love her work and the nuances found in it. And please read Luna Luna's review of the film here.

---

Lisa Marie Basile: What drew me to The Love Witch was the fact that it was about a witch, of course, but also the fact that you so unapologetically used glamor and aesthetic as its own character. How do you think its unique look enhances the way the viewer emotionally reacts to the film? 

Audiences respond to cinematic images very strongly, no matter what those images are. What’s strange about many movies today is how hard they try to seem unmediated — undesigned, unlit, as if the actors are just “there” and it’s all real, like makeup that takes an hour to put on to make it look as though you’re not wearing any makeup. But these are all choices. Deciding not to have glamour in your movie, not to have aesthetics look like aesthetics – that’s a choice too. I love glamour, so I use it. It’s a personal choice. It’s what I like to see on the screen. But in the kind of lighting I like, it’s not only people that are glamorous. Objects are glamorous too — chairs, mirrors, stairways, gardens. Beautiful lighting and design does produce heightened emotions. It also enhances the story because the audience is being told what to focus on through what is treated with the best shots and lighting.

Lisa Marie Basile: The Love Witch is interesting in that it can be (I think, very wrongfully) passed off as anti-feminist when viewed under the wrong lens. Obviously, this film is all about subversion. With so many people talking about the Bechdel test (which this film passes!) for film, how do you feel about it?

Anna Biller: If think if people are seeing the film as anti-feminist, then they’re either confused about what feminism is or they’re not seeing the film at all. The entire content of the film is about a woman’s life being destroyed by being made into a sex object within a patriarchal system. 

Lisa Marie Basile: I know you asked people to stop saying the acting is 'wooden' and you asked people not to assume it takes place in the 1960s. Can you tell me a little about the way you approached the film and why you made these choices? 

Anna Biller: I made the choices I made for the same reason anyone makes choices for their film: because they fit the story I was trying to tell, and because of my own sense of aesthetics. As for the acting, it’s good acting done by trained classical actors.

Lisa Marie Basile: What do you think of people who criticize the film for being filled with beautiful girls for the most part? From feminists I know who loved and saw the film, a few (of course, not all) said that was one element that did bug them.

I'm wondering if that was more than a typical silverscreen-casting call — and more an explicit attempt at capturing some of that narcissism and female sexual power you're exploring? 

What’s wrong with beautiful girls? What’s antifeminist about that, unless feminists actually buy into a sexist stereotype that only unattractive women can be feminists? That’s really shocking to me. I love to look at beautiful women on the screen. It has nothing to do with catering to what men like and want to see. Also, a very high proportion of working actresses are attractive. Many directors don’t have their beautiful actresses wear a lot of makeup or dress in cute clothes. Does that make those directors more feminist-friendly?

Shouldn’t people look at the text, and not at what the actresses look like and what they are wearing? What kinds of messages are women sending when they become obsessed about the appearance of women on the screen rather than focusing on the complex characters they are portraying? Also, what do these objectors think of the character of Trish? She is Elaine’s foil, a woman who does not base her value on her looks. And Elaine, the one who is obsessed with her looks, ends up being the one whose values are questioned in the movie. That’s why I say that if people think the film is anti-feminist, they’re not following the narrative.

But as I said earlier, I do love glamour, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I am deliberately trying to bring back dignity and pleasure to glamour, which is something that used to give women a great deal of pleasure before they started having to feel guilty about it. It’s actually a political stance. It’s about not being ashamed of being a woman and looking feminine, and about not privileging a male or genderless mode of self-presentation as being better. It’s not better or worse, it’s just another choice. If we are truly liberated, we should be able to take pleasure in any mode of self-presentation we choose, and we should absolutely not have to apologize or feel ashamed for being born with a good bone structure!

But as I said earlier, I do love glamour, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I am deliberately trying to bring back dignity and pleasure to glamour, which is something that used to give women a great deal of pleasure before they started having to feel guilty about it.

Lisa Marie Basile: I recently wrote an article about witchcraft as self-care — and part of that reasoning is that people are finally coming to understand that it's not just hocus-pocus, that it's not only real, but that there can be a feminist, empowering element to it. Your film explores both ends of the spectrum. The magic and feminism — the tampon soaked in urine and the body as power, but also the desperate need for male approval and love through the Craft. How did you approach that binary, and why was it important to you to explore both? 

Elaine’s need for respect and love is a primary human need, especially for people who were raised without love. What I have found is that women often turn to witchcraft to find personal power, which is how Elaine came to it. But she also came to it out of desperation, which is always a bad way to approach any kind of religion.

Lisa Marie Basile: I felt that The Love Witch had this Lynchian quality — there were plenty of scenes that had an eerie, uncomfortable undertone. A disconnect from reality, perhaps? It slowly creeps under your skin. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Lynch and your filmmaking inspirations in general. 

I’m actually interested in reality much more than I’m interested in disconnecting from it, although I like to construct an alternate reality with cinema. I’ve often been compared to Lynch, but I think he is trying to point out the weird in the everyday, and I am more trying to point out the mythic in the everyday. But I do agree that my work can be eerie.

I think the eeriness comes from the mix of strong, sincere emotions and heightened visuals, along with a slight sense of detachment from the whole thing. When I’m making a film I almost feel as if I am dead, I am that much in a trance. So I am looking down at the whole thing from a great height as if it has nothing to do with me, and I am just a spirit medium teasing the film out of the ether, but it’s based on all the things that happened to me in life and mediated magically through the media of script, acting, lighting, film, and editing. 

Elaine’s need for respect and love is a primary human need, especially for people who were raised without love.

Lisa Marie Basile: I respect so much that your film explains witchcraft as a way to manifest intent. I know you studied witchcraft when making this film. Have you thought that previous films showcased witchcraft incorrectly, as something different?

Witchcraft as a way of manifesting intent comes from modern Wicca and from Aleister Crowley. It’s how real practicing witches think of witchcraft. I’ve rarely seen any film that deals with witchcraft the way it’s actually practiced, except maybe the original version of The Wicker Man.

Lisa Marie Basile: [READERS BEWARE: SPOILER ALERT]

When Elaine kills Griff (and when Wayne dies), it is unclear to me how Elaine feels. I struggle with this a lot — and I've watched it a few times. Maybe that's because Elaine herself is both dark and light ("you have two selves," says Wayne). Is she capable of feeling loss? Is she mourning these men's imperfections and rejections?

I think that when Wayne dies, she is very sad. But it’s not the type of sad one usually feels when mourning a death; it’s more the type of sad when you’ve broken your new toy, and now you are bored because you have nothing to play with. So it’s “narcissistic sad.” When Griff dies she’s not sad — she’s more relieved. Now she’s done away with the obstacle of the real man who argues with her and refuses to tell her he loves her, and she instead has the imaginary man, who says he loves her, marries her, and carries her away on a white unicorn. So at this point she has completely lost touch with reality.

Lisa Marie Basile: I've heard a lot of comparisons between Elaine and Lana Del Rey, which is interesting (I LOVE them both) — and between The Love Witch and Lana Del Rey's sensibilities. What do you think?

I don’t know. They’re both pretty girls with long brown hair who dress ‘60s. It’s a pretty superficial comparison. I like Lana’s look and aesthetic a lot, though. 

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Elaine, a beautiful young witch, is determined to find a man to love her. In her gothic Victorian apartment she makes spells and potions, and then picks up men and seduces them.