The texts presented below were written using this automatic writing seance (composed by the author and a friend). The seance happened at different times, and in different places, throughout the pandemic. 

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Blockula

we are the hyacinth girls / draped in wet / green tongues / green mouths / green stone / green drink / a rose repeating / a rose repeating / wet of the myth of absinthe / green mouths / green tongues of water / sugar cubes melting / a rose repeating / a rose repeating  /  the heart of light /  oh oh / the endless sign

Across from me Anna wears all black. It is Easter. The witches are entering Blockula. In the middle of the table there is a black swan. To the left of the swan a small porcelain plate with a motif of wildflowers. On top of the plate is a pile of sugar cubes. In the middle of the table four black candles, two stones, a bottle of absinthe, and a twig are spread out on top of a lace rose altar cloth. Anna is writing as a piano note repeats itself. Unknown voices whisper over one another in crescendo. Sitting near her I am another me. The me she has never met. The me she will never meet. The music reaches a break of bells.

Time is a sugar cube dosed in water crumbling into a cup of absinthe. I am the fork that holds the sugar cube. I look down out my hand and try not to think about the particles of plastic swirling in my blood. The particles of plastic in the absinthe, in the water, in Anna. We sigh plastic. We bleed plastic. We fuck plastic. Plastic bodies birthing plastic babies. We feel that we are endless and this endlessness is plastic. I can no longer feel the earth’s vibrations because I am plasticized.

Sea Witch

become algae
become kelp

sway in the movement 
of your own mitochondria 

i am manatee
plump and floating near the surface
sea cow sea sow
sea witch

become mangrove
become brackish

linger in the line
where fresh & salt meet but never mix

i am manatee 
slow and wild in the shallows
sea cow sea sow
sea witch

becoming algae
becoming kelp

you are manatee
you are manatee
you are manatee

Heather Wild

I walk the earth a body of light. I float heather wild and lost and but not loosing. Dip into the unknown. Slip back and back and back until you become that which haunts you. When does it stop? When does it ever stop? Deep dive into who you think you are only to discover that no one is even there. Seventeen. Serpentine. Barely barren baroness. The heather wild heals as you abandon all your little thoughts. Lead me down to the river. Let me be precious. Brother. Brother. Brother. Brother Brother. Elemental closeness. Not of fire but of blood. Or, if not blood then spirit. Sister. Sister. Sister. Sister. Sister. Prepare yourself for a sleeper in the shadows knows much less than the daisies in the field. This is the burden. This is the quickening. The muscles in my hand are in synch with the muscle of my brain. Writing as an automaton—just so many pistons and pullies. It’s becoming unbearable. It seems endless. Hyena. Widow. Willow. Birth the shadow! Wind. Willow. Whisper. Winnow. Sweat of desire lingering over the will. A green field. A white house. Nearby lilac water. What comes after the horror vacui of all this hoarded love?

Glow

anna anna iAnna 
iDeath 
glow is this sickly white sky
glow is your pale face in the moonlight 
glow is a worm 
glow is a radioactive cloudberry
            a radioactive chanterelle
            a radioactive boar 
glow is a poem of the chernobyl rains
be the poem that is the bridge 
that is the neck that is the swan 
that is the hand that is the verb 
that opens the new that bends the hand 
that breaks the bridge to be the bee
oh how to be the B 
the be of believing
the b the bee

Angel Feather Death Crown 

moss, stone, cotton candy sky serpentine barren
heather 
don’t memento mori memento everyone
who obliterates themselves in that knowingness
of girlhood

Foxcore 2.0

your body is a wild strawberry patch
your body is a binary pulsar
your body is a mind

your body is the mind
your body is the spirit
your body is aught

okay 
okay
okay

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Mai Ivfjäll is the author of four recent chapbooks: Into Longing Vast Rose (If A Leaf Falls Press), Andakt (AFV Press), Weep Hole (Sad Press), and Sick Sonnets (Radioactive Cloud). She can be found at weephole.com.