tell me about the nights my mother the witch embodied the incandescent goddess moon, before
the burning, when hunters called her tremulous euphemisms—when she laid twigs on a bed of
moss and conceived me from a rabid bear’s foam. how she healed you with periwinkle and mint
stirred counterclockwise; how you stayed wild in no man’s land. clouds above the mire predict
I’ll move to the city, but I’ll never forget the savage west, the love of a woman for a woman,
fireflies like exploded stars bursting out, the way she went up in smoke like a prayer.
//
tell me about the nights my mother the witch embodied the in
candescent goddess moon, before the burning, when h
unters called her tremulous euphemisms—when she laid twigs
on a bed of moss and conceived me from a rabid bear’s
foam. how she healed you with periwinkle and mint stirred count
erclockwise; how you stayed wild in no man’s land. clouds
above the mire predict I’ll move to the city, but I’ll never forget
the savage west, the love of a woman for a woman
, fireflies like exploded stars bursting out, the way she went
up in smoke like a prayer.
//
other the witch embodied ndess moon like a pray er.
before the burning, whers called laid ts on a bed you
move to ttyver forget the up in smoke helloooooooui
Bio: Maria S. Picone is a Korean American adoptee with work in Ice Floe Press, Bending Genres, Whale Road Review and others, including Best Small Fictions 2021. She won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. She is the prose editor at Chestnut Review. Her website is mariaspicone.com, Twitter @mspicone.