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.

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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].