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Interrogations

INTERROGATION (1)

 

 

Are you a witch?

 

Are you

 

Have you had relations with the devil?

 

Have you

 

Have you had relations with the devil and what took place?

 

I kissed him under the tail, it was a bit like soil, a bit like road tar

when it heats up, he was flickering in pleasure, the field would

be just the same when I tongue that, the bird’s feathers parting.

 

What knowledge did the devil give you?

 

I built a house next to the sea, the roof is red/orange, the sky

is a shaking plate of light peeling you back, there is grass

out the front, some metal bins, you can see a lighthouse. I began

to sleep with the windows open, I began to creep along the bed

to my own globe face in the mirror. Sitting rubbed up in myself

is this fierce fire, it does not come from me, even the stones in

the drive are crackling with it.

 

What did the devil make you do under his control?

 

His mother had just died. We ate mint ice

cream by the coffin, he was missing her,

my sock was loose, we kept laughing.

 

What is magic?

 

Picture an egg yolk, that huge yellow throw up sun.

Dementedly shining, falling out of itself, birthed and

reverent.

 

What is magic? 

 

Little cracks coming in, small flaws in the glass,

and the air slapping itself, you stand on a hill,

things are mainly green and breakable,

you think ok I’m not alone, but mainly,

ok I was never alone, on a far off hill the

earth is breaking up against the gas pressure

of the sun, if there was ever anything to miss

this is what you miss, how it’s beginning.

 

What crimes have you enacted?

 

Love makes me forget myself sometimes.

I am horribly angry, I am sick with it,

my vomit turns black, but this love.

I can’t explain it, beyond that it is exactly.

 

What other witches/sorcerers have you conjured with?

 

S couldn’t eat. The food was poor and cheap but not that.

She had these violet eyes.

 

Have you taken black mass?

 

I’ve wondered why things turn. Rustling and fluttering cells,

the nib of the chest where what you might call soul slides out

and enters a hyena fucking happily amongst the fruit rinds.

 

What did the devil make you do under his control?

 

What you should do is go out and get really drunk.

 

What did the devil make you do under his control?

 

What you should do is get a sleeper train.

 

What did the devil make you do under his control?

 

I can pack everything and I can carry the suitcases up

staircases and along roads. I can go, even though

I am not importantly myself. Some of the things

that are me can go.

 

Have you profaned holy scripture?

 

The biggest fear is that reality itself starts to curdle,

stiffens into waxy stops.

 

Were you born to witches?

 

Were you

 

Who have you used spells against in this parish?

 

I can’t say that I’ve met god directly, but I

can tell you how I think of it. God holding my heart

in a palm as it flexes from blue to green to white.

God being really tired, haar of sea fog.

I’ve had to decide what it looks like, what it is.

Shiver of the long world, cold feet,

a small, bright, filthy song.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

REBECCA TAMÁS is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University. Her pamphlet Savage was published by Clinic, and was a LRB Bookshop pamphlet of the year, and a Poetry School book of the year. Rebecca’s first full-length poetry collection, WITCH, was published by Penned in the Margins in March 2019. She is editor, together with Sarah Shin, of Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry, published by Ignota Books. Her collection Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman was published by Makina Books in October 2020.  

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