Harpy

There is a silence in the heart of spring when all lays dying. Mountain lions scout the empty streets. The first green hint of a dandelion rises boldly from the …

Rituals

We don’t remember when we sheeted the mirrors and withdrew into the bowels of the house with shorn hair. It wasn’t penance — in plain white, in some places, in …

Hildegard

Feel the slide of air through your fingers. My hair: breathe it out, those words. It’s all of me you can touch, now. My face: the smooth grain of birch …

They’re digging mass graves in Qom

They say the lines are etched in the ground around that desert town spreading wide from the seed of a crack a windshield after an upflung stone from the roads …

The five nights of Thesmophoria

One of my vows this year is to celebrate the rituals of the Thesmophoria, an important complex of Eleusinian holidays. As with all ancient holidays, the precise date and number …

Melaina and Baubo

Head bowed in the stone hall, black-shrouded, so hard it is to force a laugh to forget the cause of barrenness: that hole in the earth that once spoke with …

Hymn for the waiting Demeter

All-Holy Demeter, you who wait on the warming earth for your Daughter’s arrival, your ragged mourning cloak shed in the strengthening light. You dare laughter, now, so close is the …