3/28/2021 Poetry by Rita Mookerjee Jason Tessier CC
Crystal Fisticuffs for Messy Mystics Who Like Rings I’ve never left the house without jewelry, without talismans from my mom, pearls for my name, but lately, I want to add brass knuckles to the rotation. Though they’re kind of plain plus I doubt there is a set out there to fit my hands. These size 4 fingers drip in gold and flip the bird but these days, I’m looking to make a statement and leave an impression. Do you follow me? Because if I’m gonna swing on somebody, how about something with a little more bite and next level shine? Gimme that Sailor Moon slap of sparkle with woodshop dyke practicality. Bespoke, in house-only. No mass production because this power, this fight is sacred. What if I could thread my fingers through a crystal ball like here, I hold your future in the palm of my hand and so sorry to spill the secrets of the universe but your journey ends here? That’s heavy, I know but spiritually, I can’t keep it real without getting messy. And lately, there are too many Sabrina-wannabe white girls watching too much American Horror Story, playing too much tarot as if that shit is more than a game so if you’re gonna read something read this: we are at war and your stolen sage bundles are not helping. You try to keep it earthy with all those salt lamps and rose quartz, all that Wiccan white supremacy mined by brown hands for pennies. You don’t know the occult, you’re just riding the dick of manifest destiny, so here I come again, the oracle of bad news for you boo. Because most of your crystals are plain old glass, sometimes plastic so the only gleams of truth you get come from sunlight dancing off Made in China stickers that you didn’t think to peel from the base. These are no allies of mine, so I wanna grab a bunch of queers, head into the mountains, and dig together for a ridge of amethyst points that we cut finger holes through but keep jagged and unwashed so that long after any fight, our enemies will sting pulling muddied slivers from skin. Even months later, they’ll glimpse a shard of something barely violet inside a callous, a blessed token from us messy mystics who told you: we are beautiful but from the center of our majik, venom seethes. Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Iowa State University. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Hobart Pulp, New Orleans Review, The Offing, and the Baltimore Review. Rita is both the Sex and Poetry Editor at Honey Literary as well as the Assistant Poetry Editor of Split Lip Magazine, and a poetry staff reader for [PANK]. Comments are closed.
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