this country will require you to be magical then attempt to burn you for being a witch
By Angelique Zobitz
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
Girl-child, power-in-waiting, Revolution, this world will try to cleave you in half, reach inside— lay waste, leave you a bloody mess of seed, pulp, carved out meat— pick your bones attempt to harness your sweet for a world full of eager carrion birds. Transfigurate: flower, fruit, fire— unfurl an inferno curling coils down your devil back. Scorch them with your flame tongue. Remind them you predate evangelism; leave them ashes, burn them down— teach them our bodies are best left alone.
Angelique Zobitz (she/her/hers) is the author of the chapbooks Burn Down Your House (Milk & Cake Press) and Love Letters to The Revolution (American Poetry Journal). Her first book, Seraphim, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in April 2024. She is a 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and Philip Levine Prize finalist, multi-nominated for the Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Sugar House Review, Yemasse, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, The Adirondack Review, ANMLY, and many others. She can be found at www.angeliquezobitz.com and on Twitter and Instagram: @angeliquezobitz.
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When a poem stays with me for a few days, I know it has teeth. Gorgeous poem Angelique! Especially these lines for me:
Scorch them with your flame
tongue. Remind them you
predate evangelism;
leave them ashes,
burn them down—