Poetry: Molting Season
A Dark, Watery Serpentine Poem for Scorpio Season
Molting Season
A flicking forked tongue
Hisssssssssssssses
A half-digested, rotting arrogance
About the darkness it’s never felt
Deep inside the curvature of
Delicate spider cloth ribs,
Losses that strike and sting
Northern Copperhead fangs
Hidden in rocky hillsides
Wooded lowlands.
I morph into a slow mover
Growing sinuous scales
Amongst gold leaf glitter
Fusty wet logs and broken branches,
My eyelids stretched thin into
Spectacles for sharper vision,
My face pining for a warmth
That elongates, rippling crimson
Past visible light.
When it ssssssspeaks its truth
Everyone else has it all wrong
Stock-still, coiled, and cold-blooded
Self-important venom
Spatters Saturn-stern.
Black and white stings hot and red
Sun-blinded and oblivious.
Incurious, it asks no questions.
And in the luculent pause
Water whispers in my ears
Bottomless blue lakessssssss
Rushing white-capped rivers
Undulating my name
In waves of crystal clarity.
Nine hundred thirteen days of
Pummeling thunderstorms
Humid, torrential tears
Buried me deep down into
Muddy sediment beds,
Uncovering the antidote.
I can just swallow the
Shimmering moon and
Swim away.
Godsssssssssssspeed.
Christine Blystone is a writer, artist, and designer from the Pacific Northwest. She’s the author of Magic Flowers and creator of the Magic Flowers Plant Poetry Oracle Deck. Her work explores the intersection of art, healing, metaphysics, and the wisdom of nature. Her writing has also appeared in Mountain Bluebird Magazine.
Erin O’Neill grew up in the woods of northern Michigan and is now based in Minneapolis. She creates dungeon synth, neo-psychedelia, and dream pop, as well as original compositions for visual performance art. A mother and renewable energy specialist with a background in anthropology, she draws on themes of nature, esotericism, fantasy, and spirituality in her work.