What you have buried
the Morrigan will unearth.
What you have hidden
the Morrigan will unveil.
What you have stifled
the Morrigan will revive.
What you have fled
the Morrigan will plant in your path
inescapable, unavoidable, immutable.
you are an apple, a garden
a single seed
knowledge bought dearly
by sacrificial deed
Fever’s got him again, eyes rolling in sunken sockets as he mutters, I never asked you to follow me. Why did you follow me? You were supposed to stay behind, you don’t belong here, you’ve never belonged here. You have no idea what he’s talking about but you rarely do these days; you’re used to this feeling by now, the helpless concern when all you can do is be present with him and make sure those twitching hands don’t reach for anything sharp. I should have commanded you to stay, he hisses, and then his long fingers are fisted in your collar and his gaze is sharp and urgent as it pins you in place. It was my punishment, I never wanted you to follow me down here. Why did you follow me? And then, softer, Don’t you miss it? You have no idea what he’s talking about but you know what your answer would be if you did, so as you gently unclench those deadly, lovely hands you murmur, Of course not, darling. I only ever want to be beside you. I will always follow you. It’s not the answer he wants but he doesn’t argue, the fever’s worn him out. All he does is sink into your arms with a moan and let it pull him under once more.
Imagine you are born to run with a pack
yet there is no other like you in all the universes.
Imagine you are born to sing songs with your kin
yet they muzzle you with a sword through your mouth.
Imagine you are born to run, the hunt burning in your veins
yet they bind your legs with unbreakable bonds.
Perhaps this is what they meant
when they said you were born this way:
that you were destined to become a monster
because they never intended any other option for you.
My gods are living gods. They speak in dreams and divination, in blessings and curses, in all the tongues of man.
My gods are dying gods. Their celestial bodies rot with fate from within; they cough up ichor and vomit starlight.
My gods are dead gods. Their corpses hang on meat hooks. Their temples lay in ruin and dust.
My gods are resurrected gods. They walk out of the underworld with heads held high, summoning spring buds from winter’s rot.
My gods are undying gods. Their names, first uttered millennia ago, are spoken still. Whether we believe or not, we uphold their memory.
My gods are deathless gods. They have always existed and they always will.
sometimes I am the bowl
sometimes I am its absence
and sometimes I am venom
poured in secret upon visceral chains
hastening Ragnarok’s approach
You are worse than the villain; you are sympathetic to him. You would walk up to the bound wolf and remove the sword from his jaws. You would forgive the man who gutted you and unleash him upon the world. You would leap gladly into the abyss to follow the exiled angel. You are worse than the villain; you are his devotee, his firebrand. You see to the very core of him, to all the ugliness within, and you find it beautiful. You nurture his rage and delight in his ruthlessness. The blood he spills is on your hands but you bear it proudly as the mark of your loyalty. You are worse than the villain; you are the one who loves him unconditionally.
Odin is dead, Odin is undead
Loki is chained, Loki is unchained
The World Serpent sheds its skin
Bleeds and writhes in death throes
Ragnarok approaches
Skål! Skål! Skål!
We are all fighting our own separate battles, says the Morrigan, but they are all part of the same great war. Then She cautions me, Don’t run from your battlefield in search of a fight you think is more important. How can you aid someone else in their battle if you haven’t even triumphed over your own yet? She’s right, I know She’s right, but I chafe at the waiting. For years now the Morrigan has been calling up Her warriors to wage war against the global evils of colonialism, capitalism, and fascism, and ever since I heard Her call over two years ago I’ve yearned to learn my role in Her army. It seems, though, that my assignment is still to wage the battles awaiting me on my homefront, to get my house in order before I truly become part of the Phantom Queen’s force. I’m not disappointed because I envision myself a warrior on the front lines, fighting for glory and a hero’s renown – I will happily serve in whatever capacity the Morrigan deems best for me, even if it’s on the sidelines. I’m just eager to help at all, and doing shadow work meant to reclaim my personal sovereignty just doesn’t feel like much immediate help to others. Whoever goes into battle without a clear head goes to their grave, my goddess chastises me as I brood, and I know my time in the Morrigan’s bootcamp is far from over.
Can you really blame the gods who saw what humanity had become and chose to just wipe the slate clean, start anew? Perhaps when Ra or YHWH or Zeus looked down upon an earth crawling with mortals they saw not present vices but future crimes; not idolatry and rebellion but nuclear war, global warming, and the creeping, inevitable extinction of every beautiful species they themselves created. Maybe the gods saw all that shit and thought nope, gotta get these guys the fuck outta here. Tell me, and be honest now, can you say with perfect certainty that you would not have done the same, had you been in their position? Or would you also send a worldflood or hungry war goddess to handle the situation in your stead? For the bees I might have. For the bees and ice caps and rainforests.
Inanna comes to me as the Whore of Babylon, naked as the dawn with golden goblet of wine in hand. In her wake she leaves a trail of red footprints from the battlefield where she danced on her enemies’ corpses, men who thought her pendulous breasts and round hips were theirs to covet. Plump ruby lips pull back from grinning white teeth as she leans down to spear and hold my meek gaze with her gleaming starlight eyes. You owe them nothing, child, she pronounces in a voice which shakes all of existence from heavens to underworld, not gender, not desire, not beauty. You don’t owe them answers or obedience, please or thank you, respectability or humility. The goddess straightens, taking a long drink from the goblet, then licks wine off her lips like a lioness cleaning blood from her fur. She fixes me with her hard stare once more and points at me with her free hand as she adds, And you sure as fuck don’t owe them silence. Go loud.
In my dream I crush spell ingredients against my palms, selenite and lavender and something gritty like sand or charcoal, while behind me a friend whispers sacred words and rubs herbs into the skin at the base of my neck. I look up into the blue dome of the sky where a bright full moon hangs and begin to pray. As I do, a woman appears in the sky beneath the moon, her voluptuous body and flowing robes all rich shades of green; at the same time, above the moon appears the planet Saturn, as close and vibrant as the moon itself. I raise my hands, palms pressed together, and cry out to this glorious vision of Gaia who smiles down at me: Please, give me control of my dreams again, take away my fear, help me be strong! The goddess spreads her arms wide and I’m enveloped in a violet aura of holy energy, the music of birdsong filling my ears as the blessing swirls around me. When it dissipates I’m left shaking with adrenaline and awe.
“Sacrifice/Courage”
like a maiden plucking flower petals, so idly did She cast her raiment off
striding naked into the pit of the underworld, proud head held high
to welcome Her death with a queen’s grace, arms wide and eyes alight
“Devotion”
Devotion quarried the stones and raised the temples
carved the statues and gilded the icons.
Devotion preserved the myths and protected the tombs
dusted off the altars and restored the artwork.
Devotion carried their gods around the world
and devotion carries them into the future.
My fifth zine is now available! Worship the Monsteresses is dedicated to the monsteresses and maligned women of mythology. It explores what we can learn from their stories by tapping into the ugly parts inside us all. This zine features 22 pages of my original prose, poetry, and hand-drawn art.
PDF copies are free; physical copies are $5 plus shipping. Check it out at my Kofi!
Worship the monstresses, girl;
they are hungry and fathomless.
Feed your rage to Ammit.
Feed your sorrow to Medusa.
Feed your terror to Charybdis.
Lay your howling at the altar of the Nameless
and let her fill you with the cold vacuum of the void.
Worship the beast queens, girl;
they will teach you to devour your oppressors.
in my dreams
I slit the throats of abusive fathers
my nails sharp as harpy talons
I drag rapists into the streets by their hair
smash their skulls with a silver hammer
I ride laughing through dark woods
on the back of a great goat
I fear nothing
and no one
in my dreams
“Fenrir”
What newborn pup could tell
sweet milk from sour
fresh meat from rotten?
I, too, long
to bite the hand that fed me
knowing what I know now.
The solstice approaches and I consider the death of gods. I think of Inanna walking proudly through the underworld’s seven gates to her death on the meat hook, of Odin hanging nine days dead on the world tree and Christ laying three days dead in the tomb. I think of Osiris, Persephone, Proserpina, Dumuzi, Baldr. Of Aphrodite weeping over Adonis and Achilles weeping over Patroclus.
And then there is you, Lord Sun, fairest and most beloved. The solstice approaches, yet you do not drown me in dreams of blood or deafen me with your cacophonous wailing like past years. Your halls are silent, your rooms are empty, and I wonder why. Could it be that you go willingly to your death this time? Have you made some sort of peace with it like those other harvest gods destined for the slaughter, those deities who sacrificed themselves for wisdom or were punished for being too beautiful, too good?
Perhaps this solstice you will bow willingly to you fate, to the dying and the decay, the rot and the long rest. The wheel on which the world turns must be oiled in blood. Yet though the solstice relies on violence, that violence need not be fueled by hatred or ugliness. Death can be beautiful, a gift of mercy or love, and your death on the longest night drives the resurrection of your brother-lover and the fallow time of winter. Thus the Oak King bleeding out in his Holly King’s arms; thus you, Lord Sun, spilling out your shining golden blood in your beloved Moon’s arms.
Maybe this time we can focus on the beauty in your death, not the tragedy. What do you think?
look into my eyes;
how can you not see I am
Alexandria’s charred skeleton
Delphi’s discard, Pompeii’s corpse-hollows
a husk of a revenant vomiting
endless bean sí grief-wail?
HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE I AM
A THING ALREADY DEAD?
I think perhaps
I am as much a woman as
Scylla with her many serpent heads
Charybdis with her churning waters
Ammit with her long crocodile jaws
all bloody from chewing rotten hearts
which is to say
not really.
I’m like that myth about the sculptor who so loved the woman he sculpted from marble that the gods granted her life – only the opposite. I’m not stone becoming human, I’m human becoming stone; and as my flesh grows cold and hard I fear your love too will diminish instead of grow. Perhaps in this version of the tale it was a divine punishment, not a blessing, which set these events in motion. Did I so offend some goddess of love that she would curse me to never experience the kind of desire one expects from their beloved? Is it justice, this lacking which alienates me from the rest of humanity? I would not wish this affliction on anyone, so perhaps this is indeed a retribution I deserve.
I am the darkness in the garden. I am the stuff from which world serpents are made and the soil in which world trees are planted. I am the womb of the underworld into which Inanna descended to die and be reborn. I am pomegranate seeds and forbidden fruit. I am the river and the boat and the ferryman’s coins. I am the core of every myth, the ending and the beginning, Alpha and Omega and Armageddon.
The phoenix is lucky;
Fire is the easy way out.
I want to transform as well,
Rise out of my ashes,
But I must use my teeth and nails
And I make such a bloody mess.
The Nameless is the vastness of the ocean. She is dark trenches full of strange creatures with eyes like pale globes; she is sunken ships buried in pelagic sediment; she is things thought long dead and things never before glimpsed in the light of day. She is the horizon extending unbroken in all directions. She is vanished airplanes and flying ghost ships and cities lost to wrathful waves.
The Nameless is the vastness of space. She is the bright points of Inanna’s morning star and the sharp blade of Artemis’ crescent moon. She is the void’s absolute absence of light or life. She is the incomprehensible enormity of supermassive blackholes; she is the unstoppable destruction of solar storms and hypernovae. She is fire from the sky, the longest night, the dusty river of the Milky Way.
The Nameless is the vastness of the grave. She is rot and mold and fresh-turned earth. She is catacombs, crypts, pyramids, pyres. She is stone so softened by a millennia of rain that the name it bears is lost to time. She is the banshee’s wail, the grim’s red stare, the braying horns of the Wild Hunt. She is the feather and scales, and she is the jaws of Ammit waiting to devour the heavy heart.
Some say revenge is a dish best served cold. Others say the best revenge is a life well lived. These claims, however, are in actuality both quite inadequate. I have taken revenge countless times, in every manner possible and with every kind of weapon, and I therefore can state with confidence that the most satisfying revenge is intimate. A razor to the throat; a blade to the breast; a knife to the back. The sort of sharp, bloody end most fitting for traitors and cowards, those whose betrayal has cut you to your very core. You want to hold your victim in your arms so you feel the moment his strength finally fails. You want to hear the blood bubbling in his throat as he struggles to breathe. You want to hold his gaze as he dies so in his final moment he knows you did not forget and will not forgive. It is like a dance, two partners entwined, heartbeat to heartbeat, and then the knife. It always ends with the knife.
You ask why the Moon killed the Sun but never why the resurrected Sun in turn killed the Moon. Did he really do so to restore balance to the world, as the story says? To complete the cycle of sacrifice and usher in glorious summer? Perhaps. It gives a nice symmetry to the mythology, doesn’t it? Death for life and life for death. But maybe that’s just the fairy tale version where everything has a purpose and everyone a happy ending. Maybe that’s nothing more than a lovely lie.
Maybe the truth is that the Sun killed the Moon simply for the sweet satisfaction of revenge.
Insatiable Charybdis,
drag me like a tiny ship into your chill black waters
shatter my hull, snap my decks, tear away my sails
I offer you my fear; drown it in the deep!
I offer you my hate; drown it in the deep!
I offer you my sorrow; drown it in the deep!
Monstrous Charybdis,
transform what remains of me into teeth and wrath
set my maelstrom heart free to devour the world
I am a vortex too, inside
Darkness. Then a voice.
Would you fall for me again, knowing how it all would end?
He recalls the reek of burning feathers, the bone-breaking impact.
Yes. Always.
He opens his eyes to see his lover’s outstretched hand. He clasps it and climbs up onto the ledge.
Sacral
I am the many times great grandchild of cursed, damned Pandora. All my life I have witnessed the consequences of her thoughtless decision and yet all my life I have repeated her mistake as if it runs so strongly through my veins that it moves my body of its own accord. There is a sweet music that plays when the lid of my own box is opened, you see, and sometimes I am sorely tempted to pull back the lid so others can hear it as well. The problem is that I’ve stuffed so much into my box with the intention of locking it all away that when I do crack open the lid, even the tiniest bit, anything might come spilling out. Anger, fear, depression, anxiety, cruelty, grudges, sorrow, grief, mania, jealousy, apathy, shame, any of them could break free if I’m not careful. The music my box plays is beautiful but is it worth the worry that what escapes might hurt someone I love? Is it worth the chance that someone might see all of me and not just the parts I’ve tamed and made presentable? Every time I start to open my box just a crack I think of poor Pandora and I slam shut the lid again. She had no idea what she might unleash, opening that box, but I do.
You know, I almost hope unicorns don’t exist. Dragons, too, and fairies and gryphons and harpies, the grim and the sphinx, even ol’ Nessie; all those mythical creatures so rare and beautiful. I hope they’re not real, or at least that they’re long gone by now. That sounds terrible, I know, but think about the shape our world’s in. Do you want such fantastical symbols to exist on an earth we’re running to ruin? I’m not sure I could handle that; it might just be the very last straw. Imagine unicorns treading daintily over cracked concrete with plastic bags tangled around their shining hooves! Imagine kelpies coated in oil, their organs full of microplastics and chemicals! If our trash has made its way to the very farthest depths of the oceans, even onto the moon itself, then where can these legendary creatures possibly hide to escape our touch? Sure, some of them might survive in a polluted landscape – banshees, goblins, other assorted spooks – but not many. And anyway, even a banshee deserves a nice lonely moor to haunt, not some drained and cultivated piece of land with condos sitting on top. It would just suck, is all I’m saying, if we had such magical creatures in our midst and dragged them down with us. If all those unbelievable beings do exist, I hope they can at least get the hell out of here while the getting’s good.
Only Fragments 