RISE, YOU BLACK MAGIC WOMAN

by Laurie Rosen

In 1692 Sarah Good, wrongly accused

of witchcraft, was hanged. Her daughter, 

Dorothy Good, also wrongly accused, 

was imprisoned at just four or five years old.

A week into 2026 Renee Nicole Good 

was executed by a lawless ICE agent.      

A poet, Renee’s power was paying attention, 

putting what she witnessed into lyrical, exquisite 

words that touched hearts, won prizes.  

Vance, Trump, and other talking heads

haven’t yet labelled Renee a witch, 

but they use hateful phrases to describe her–– 

evil, brainwashed, radicalized, disruptor, 

and domestic terrorist. They spread lies,  

pretending to prove untruths. 

They fear Renee’s strength. They’re frightened 

by her memory, anxious that our gathering crowds 

will confirm their impotence, reveal

their profound malevolence.

They’re not wrong to be afraid. 

Though they burn us down

with tear gas, pepper spray, bullets, 

slander us in kangaroo courts,  

they can’t stop seeing

our covens grow.

Our brew overflows now––

loud, fierce and unstoppable!  

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in One Art: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, Oddball Magazine, The New Verse News, The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food, Zig Zag Lit Mag, and elsewhere. Laurie was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. This poem is another in a series of  “witch poems” that she is writing. 

OCTOBER 31

by Tricia Knoll

Photo by Nathaniel Kelly at Flickr.

Halloween scares her. That surprises me—

she is sixty, sexy and beautiful. Would make

a glamorous witch. Barbie’s mother. 

 

Perhaps it’s plastic skeletons two stories tall,

memories of falling in a puddle in a ballerina costume

on the way to a neighbor’s door, gauze ghosts

dangling from naked limbs, costume party

shootings. Zombie and Yorick skulls on leafy lawns. 

Or family feuds over dividing her dead 

father’s assets. Her brother’s cleaver. 

 

Or porches and lanterns doused in acrylic webs

and jack o’ lanterns whose smiles sag in mold.

TV images of fractured concrete in bombed out enclaves. 

Forty-two million tons of rubble, 36 cubic feet each ton, 

a grave takes 120 cubic feet. Flinch. The dead walk

starved, confused. Hamlet’s father’s ghost refuses

to speak. A revived corpse never asks

for a Kiss or Snickers. 

 

Maybe it’s money. Twelve billion

on starbursts, skittles, candy corn, and twix.

You could buy half an island with a fog bell

in San Francisco Bay. Climate chaos 

balloons the cost of chocolate. 

 

Days narrow. Clocks reset and whack rhythms.

Lively green folds into loam. We hear carols. 

Ads run for books of evangelical horror 

and Amish romance. Stuffed Santas 

line pharmacy shelves beside pumpkin

plastic pails of high fructose corn syrup.

Flimsy polyester dinosaur suits crawl

to landfills. Few believe in reasons

to wear masks. What am I to do? 

Write another starlight promise

poem? Light the bonfire? 

Hug her? Kiss her cheek?

Tricia Knoll has usually enjoyed the Halloween season, but not so much this year. Too much angst about election weirdness. She can't stop from thinking about all the money spent on the holiday and how much is needed in war zones. Her poetry is published in nine either full-length books or chapbooks with information at triciaknoll.com

THE GHOST OF THE OLD COUNTRY

by Kathryn A. Broderick

My grandmother is from the Old Country

A land of winding cities, valorous heroes, and ancient towers

Across the green-glass seas.

 

She whispers words that flow like water

As she sparks to life stories in that distant place

—But lowly and in secret, shamed by her foreign tongue.

 

Yet her secrets drip into the new life she’s crafted here

Coloring the edges of suburbia in Anywhere, USA

A resilient stain that assimilation cannot wash away.

 

The dust of butter-rich tea cakes

Cling to her withered fingers

As she weaves tales of her faraway home.

 

She tells me of the wild Baba Yaga

A witch that lives in a hut atop a mighty bird’s leg

And the ways to escape her enchantment.

 

She often weaves together the push-pull of escape and return

Haunted by the melancholia of self-imposed exile

As she tries to accept her unwilling divorce from the Old Country.

 

In her garden, soniashnyk bow their golden heads toward the sun

She calls the flowers her little kings with many-petalled crowns

She rests in their shadows as she paints pictures of her lost home.

 

My grandmother died before I knew the Old Country meant Ukraine.

She told me tales of its beauty. I never knew of its death.

She fled from its capital as a child.

 

Her father did not survive the journey

—at least, not as the same man.

Ghosts lingered in his heart.

 

The famine turned into skeletons those that remained.

Their bones returning to the embrace of earth in unmarked graves.

“Have another tea cake,” she’d say. “You look hungry.”

 

What was it like to be Slavic and living in America during the Cold War?

Living under the hostile glare of suspicious eyes branding you an enemy?

Surviving against your will as your family withered away?

 

I sit in the shadow of her sunflowers

Listening to news of Russia’s unprovoked attack

And I feel her fingerprints upon the pulse of the Old Country.

 

The heroic threads and tragedy lining each of her secret stories

Now shout at me from modern headlines.

We dwell in dark times—but in the darkness heroes rise

At least, as my grandmother said, they do in the Old Country.

Kathryn A. Broderick’s work has appeared in First Line and Mirror Dance. Her second novel Gorgon Crown will be released in June 2022.

THE TRIED-AND-TRUE

by Richard Meyer




’Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.
            — from Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe


Place your faith on the tried-and-true,
the wisdom that our forebears knew.
It worked for them in times before.

Nail a horseshoe to your door,
paint the lintel and the jamb
with blood of slaughtered goat or lamb.

Salt the threshold twice a day                      
to keep the pestilence at bay.
Hang up a cross and pentagram.                  

Burn sage and myrrh to cleanse the air,
light a candle, say a prayer.
Use magic to protect yourself.

Put amulets on every shelf:                                    
a hamsa hand, a Wiccan moon,
the Eye of Horus, Viking rune,

a witch’s knot, a scarab stone,
a totem turtle carved from bone.
Don’t trust in science coming through                                

to save the day and rescue you.
Keep superstition by your side.
The paranormal will provide.

Richard Meyer, a former English and humanities teacher, lives in Mankato, MN. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone” and was the recipient of the 2014 String Poet Prize for his poem “The Autumn Way.” A book of his collected poems, Orbital Paths, was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.