From the editor: Today we offer you a Pushcart nominated poem by Alise Versella from our new book GODDESS: When She Rules, introduced by an excerpt from the book's Foreword by Sally Kempton:
One of the great projects of our time has been the re-claiming of feminine divinity...
Sacred feminine spirituality offers a particularly brilliant view of the connection between the One Goddess, and the forms in which we can relate to her. A true lover of the sacred feminine can see her as Mary AND Kali, as Gaia AND Isis.
As women have begun to emerge politically and socially, we’ve also begun trusting our own emerging wisdom about the sacred feminine. Not only are we learning to tune into our own bodies and to the natural world, but also to the radical philosophical implications of sacred feminism. Even more important, we’re recognizing through direct experience that Goddess can’t be confined to the physical or even the imaginal world, because she is the very impulse of life itself.
One of the great projects of our time has been the re-claiming of feminine divinity...
Sacred feminine spirituality offers a particularly brilliant view of the connection between the One Goddess, and the forms in which we can relate to her. A true lover of the sacred feminine can see her as Mary AND Kali, as Gaia AND Isis.
As women have begun to emerge politically and socially, we’ve also begun trusting our own emerging wisdom about the sacred feminine. Not only are we learning to tune into our own bodies and to the natural world, but also to the radical philosophical implications of sacred feminism. Even more important, we’re recognizing through direct experience that Goddess can’t be confined to the physical or even the imaginal world, because she is the very impulse of life itself.
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| Click here for your own copy |
My
Goddess Stamps Her Feet
Alise Versella
Remember child
You were born from me
Earth bound boy blue from the cord
Blue like the sky that turns black only
for the stars
You were birthed from my womb
Earth Mother Gaia expelled the titans
from her uterus
Uranus
Didn’t know how to tame such chaos
She knows how to reign in chaos
She knows how to breathe underwater so
as not to drown
She gave up the air from her lungs so
you would scream
That first holy sound
How dare you quiet her?
This silence is not golden
This silence is the beginning rumblings
of the plates
Before the earth starts shattering
I am shattering
Laying waste the poppy fields like Kali
Because I see the poetry in destruction
The same gods you pray to unleashed
their floods
So pray to your gods now for communion
This is holy uprising
This is for all the wars fought against
my body
For all the witches burned, this is the
pyre for my transforming
Stand transfixed by the wings of my
metamorphosis
My menstrual blood can revitalize that
rotted apple twisted by the vine
Like Isis brought Osiris back to life
Can’t you see the flesh turn red?
Like the red of Lilith’s lips when she
sipped Dionysus’ wine
They want you to lie
Cover up the talon tears of the canvas,
paint the colors porcelain white
God forbid you decide
To rage and rage and cry
Like Mother Nature swirls her brush
through the storm and decides to paint a hurricane
Deracinates the roots they dug into
your vertebrae
Like a willow tree you bend and bend
I want holy revelation
For the way my body curves
I want you to see the temple I built
from my words
What if god were a woman
Would you still fight for her cross
with a bullet?
Or would you plant those strewn poppy
seeds
Would you create something from the
smoke and ash of the buildings you see crumbling
Would you string a ribbon ‘round the
May Day pole,
Fix a maiden with a flower crown
Before our mothers turn to crones
Would you even notice if the moonlight
dimmed and the owl’s feathers prevented him
From flying?
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| Artwork by Chanel Baran |
Alise Versella: I am a 27 year old poet living in the pinelands of New Jersey. Poetry has always been the ether in my veins and the oxygen I breathe. It is my Five Foot Voice, my Onion Heart, I am peeling back the layers of myself like a lotus unfurling its petals in order to grow fully in the waters that can sometimes weigh us down. I’m writing poetry to find myself, I’m writing poetry to save the world. My hope it that my poetry saves someone’s world from crumbling because I believe art has the power to hold us up when we can’t find the legs to stand. You can visit me at my Facebook page here or on my website here. And my third volume of poetry, A Few Wild Stanzas, is available here.
~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~
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