Issue Two: May 23, 2019
When You Come Back as Queen of the Night
teeth will dance in a velvet mouth,
an old crow will cauterize peridot,
father will drown in bird sung salt,
mother will sing the blues of Forgive & Forget,
all the sisters’ elastics will snap,
i will break every bone in my ringing hands,
exorcisms will plague your dreams,
you will learn how soft the paw, &
click your tongue as you mend our childhood.
i will learn how to breathe underwater & anchor sorrow to the ocean floor,
& we shall wake the world every morning with the smell of frying eggs,
when you come back from the dead.
Gobblin’ Goblin
I found her by accident. There was no introduction. Hungry teeth shined with blood.
Was it mine?
I had to figure out what she wanted.
Secrets she said, For you she said, Hold them, I’m too tired.
She cried, sharp turned in on itself, Afraid to help her, afraid to not.
I learned I could love a demon.
She rolled over easily, belly to my face, swaddled, a baby she’d never been.
We sang her songs of praise, of how precious she was, & gave her her place on the bed.
We kissed her at every position of the sun, blessed her at every phase of the moon, loved her until she—
Unbeknownst to me I’d carried her all my life, until those heavy baby eyes betrayed me
& liberated her. She—a theory only— made real when seen.
Surrender
So I did. All in, secrets out.
Dacia Holliday is a queer indigenous femme Death Eater. Intergenerational trauma has folded itself into her lineage. It is from this landscape that she pulls her stories & poems, channeling her guides & ancestors as an nth generation community healer, storyteller, & orator. Her poems, stories, & spells have appeared in As/Us, Dangerous Sweetness, and My Fucking Tide: love & sex, an intimate collection chapbook. Find Dacia, aka, High Moon Femme, at www.highmoonfemme.com, where she offers all kinds of writing magic & tarot readings for the two-spirit, queer, trans, gender non-conforming, gender variant, non-binary, chronically ill, sick & disabled, working class, broke as in cash poor but rich with magic & ingenuity, Black, indigenous, people of color dreamers, survivors, community healers & organizers, sex workers, birth workers, single parents, caretakers, artists, writers, cultural workers who are healing themselves & their communities, all in the name of being ready to receive love & our future ancestors.