DIRT WITCH
& they were one dusty mound of earth, a dirt-coven made up of non-binary bodies left to sink
into the muck, indistinguishable from one another, their limbs each other's limbs, slow-swimming
across the planet just beneath our feet.
Let the great coven of dirt witches gather their spell-work here, wherever they are, whoever they
be, from now until the day our planet touches our star and we burn together.
TOWARD A THEORY OF DIRT WITCHCRAFT
Before you can find us, you must dig through the dirt. You must peel the bark from the trees and
press your lips against the barren surface. Can you hear our deaths? You drink the sap of them.
They curl around your naked toes. When you lie upon the earth, you lie upon our bodies. You
must dig to find our bones, which are also your bones. You must collect and carry them.
Before you can begin to understand that you will die, you must first begin by speaking the
deaths of others.
PATRON
My god is a rhizome of many mouths sucking water from the earth, forced to steal what was
once given. Drinking always and never satiated. Drinking to sprout trees from the ground that
propagate in silence, becoming part of the same root system, spreading throughout the planet,
going unnoticed as they crowd the ruins of abandoned amusement parks, standing guard while
rocks shatter bank windows, waiting until everything, even the money, curls against the flames.
My god will be the last remaining entity of a ruined planet, drinking always and never quenched.
Drinking always to save us from the melt of our own destruction.
FAMILIAR
Above us fly the flocks who move as one, their wings one another's wings, guiding them to a
preordained place. They mimic our movements below the earth, or we mimic theirs. Which of us
is the reflection? Are we all but a copy of those who move beside us? These birds will fall to us
eventually and we will drink their ooze as it seeps into our many mouths, drink until no more
birds fall and we become mirrorless.
COUNTERHEX
Listen. A joyful noise is what can be heard at the site of a murder: coyotes yowling at midnight,
rallying sisters to the kill. This is how beleaguered beasts reclaim their power.
I offer an augury: To say to yourself I cannot know exactly what lies beneath my feet. We once
thought our god was in the heavens without realizing we were already there, that we are the
god. How you love to struggle with the cold dirt of morning, scratching your fingernails across
rocks that refuse to budge. If only you'd wait until the sun melts the snow and turns the earth to
mud, you could find us so much easier.
My god archaea, sipping on the salts of our skins. Poison the blood of the interloper and undo.
Undo what cannot be undone, our undoing.
ALTAR
My altar is the snow-capped mountain that rests upon the body of my god. What can I do to
honor it other than to admire it in its various states of illumination? The orange of morning, the
blues and pinks of dusk fading into a holy black beneath no Moon.
My altar is one upon which many have died, flesh torn into with metal, bodies dragged through
the sagebrush by hungry men. This is not a religion of sacrifice but of wanton bloodlust. It's not
part of the Scripture, it just is.
Bodies upon bodies, invisible to most. I lay myself upon you and breathe air into your many
mouths. Through me, you speak your many deaths.
METEMPSYCHOSIS
By telling your stories, I am transformed. Your limbs, your eyes, your movements in life follow
me like an aura that surrounds my body. Everything I do is changed now that I know you. What
could I have been if you had never made yourself apparent to me?
I made an agreement with you, to meet you here, on this page. I made an agreement with you
to tell the world about your deaths, and thus change the world and through this changing, die.
Not exactly a suicide pact, but an acknowledgment of the inevitable. I promise that my mouth
will be a conduit to your many, a channel, for as long as you deem me faithful.
We will always meet no matter where I am in the world, for every speck of dirt, every majestic
landscape has seen what it is you want to tell me.
If I tell you you are beautiful, will you whisper back: bloody, monstrous, fey.
ORISON
We are made of one another.
I tell your death until I become my own and my limbs join your tangle.
We are the foundation of the earth, of all nations, and together we pray:
Sisters, let our deaths not be forgotten.
Let the art we created while living be remembered
through the many mouths we have chosen to tell it.
Let us writhe beneath this civilization in silence
but not without speaking.
& they were one dusty mound of earth, a dirt-coven made up of non-binary bodies left to sink
into the muck, indistinguishable from one another, their limbs each other's limbs, slow-swimming
across the planet just beneath our feet.
Let the great coven of dirt witches gather their spell-work here, wherever they are, whoever they
be, from now until the day our planet touches our star and we burn together.
TOWARD A THEORY OF DIRT WITCHCRAFT
Before you can find us, you must dig through the dirt. You must peel the bark from the trees and
press your lips against the barren surface. Can you hear our deaths? You drink the sap of them.
They curl around your naked toes. When you lie upon the earth, you lie upon our bodies. You
must dig to find our bones, which are also your bones. You must collect and carry them.
Before you can begin to understand that you will die, you must first begin by speaking the
deaths of others.
PATRON
My god is a rhizome of many mouths sucking water from the earth, forced to steal what was
once given. Drinking always and never satiated. Drinking to sprout trees from the ground that
propagate in silence, becoming part of the same root system, spreading throughout the planet,
going unnoticed as they crowd the ruins of abandoned amusement parks, standing guard while
rocks shatter bank windows, waiting until everything, even the money, curls against the flames.
My god will be the last remaining entity of a ruined planet, drinking always and never quenched.
Drinking always to save us from the melt of our own destruction.
FAMILIAR
Above us fly the flocks who move as one, their wings one another's wings, guiding them to a
preordained place. They mimic our movements below the earth, or we mimic theirs. Which of us
is the reflection? Are we all but a copy of those who move beside us? These birds will fall to us
eventually and we will drink their ooze as it seeps into our many mouths, drink until no more
birds fall and we become mirrorless.
COUNTERHEX
Listen. A joyful noise is what can be heard at the site of a murder: coyotes yowling at midnight,
rallying sisters to the kill. This is how beleaguered beasts reclaim their power.
I offer an augury: To say to yourself I cannot know exactly what lies beneath my feet. We once
thought our god was in the heavens without realizing we were already there, that we are the
god. How you love to struggle with the cold dirt of morning, scratching your fingernails across
rocks that refuse to budge. If only you'd wait until the sun melts the snow and turns the earth to
mud, you could find us so much easier.
My god archaea, sipping on the salts of our skins. Poison the blood of the interloper and undo.
Undo what cannot be undone, our undoing.
ALTAR
My altar is the snow-capped mountain that rests upon the body of my god. What can I do to
honor it other than to admire it in its various states of illumination? The orange of morning, the
blues and pinks of dusk fading into a holy black beneath no Moon.
My altar is one upon which many have died, flesh torn into with metal, bodies dragged through
the sagebrush by hungry men. This is not a religion of sacrifice but of wanton bloodlust. It's not
part of the Scripture, it just is.
Bodies upon bodies, invisible to most. I lay myself upon you and breathe air into your many
mouths. Through me, you speak your many deaths.
METEMPSYCHOSIS
By telling your stories, I am transformed. Your limbs, your eyes, your movements in life follow
me like an aura that surrounds my body. Everything I do is changed now that I know you. What
could I have been if you had never made yourself apparent to me?
I made an agreement with you, to meet you here, on this page. I made an agreement with you
to tell the world about your deaths, and thus change the world and through this changing, die.
Not exactly a suicide pact, but an acknowledgment of the inevitable. I promise that my mouth
will be a conduit to your many, a channel, for as long as you deem me faithful.
We will always meet no matter where I am in the world, for every speck of dirt, every majestic
landscape has seen what it is you want to tell me.
If I tell you you are beautiful, will you whisper back: bloody, monstrous, fey.
ORISON
We are made of one another.
I tell your death until I become my own and my limbs join your tangle.
We are the foundation of the earth, of all nations, and together we pray:
Sisters, let our deaths not be forgotten.
Let the art we created while living be remembered
through the many mouths we have chosen to tell it.
Let us writhe beneath this civilization in silence
but not without speaking.