Humans
- Jacklyn Janeksela (author)
- Barbara Byers (artist)
- Elæ Moss (artist)
Page count
66Keywords
Poetry, Lyric, Prose, Witchcraft, Witch, Pagan, Paganism, Femininity, Spirituality, Religion, GenderPublication date
2017Language(s)
EnglishPublication media type
Print DocumentChapbook
Publication series
Unlimited Editionsfitting a witch / hexing the stitch
“From girlhood bewitchment to womanly witchiness, from doll burials to menses and mental incantations, I can feel the uniquely quirked cycle of ghostly spells and development and growth and strong female power, creatively bubbling and boiling and gurgling and beautifully growling throughout this hexing collection. Whether it’s sinking down, rising up, or dripping, this creative flow is strong and sticky and glowing.” — Juliet Cook
“Janeksela’s Fitting a Witch // Hexing the Stitch is part lyric, part invocation and part spiritual memoir. She contemplates the thin lines between upbringing, religion and spirituality in a well-wrought text that sheds light on the ‘dark’ arts. There is no darkness in Janeksela’s lyrics; there is light, freedom and the power to deftly create one’s present existence from the raw materials of the past.” — Airea D. Matthews
“Like all good poetry, Jacklyn Janeksela’s poetry is a straddler – occupying the future and the past, the earthly world of pigtails and red dresses as well as the other world of the devil and astral plane. If you read this book, you will become a straddler too, a person who is both enchanted and possessed.” — Juliet Escoria
the pursuit of one girl divided into two parts under three elements & guided by one heart. shadow the girls as they journey the cycle, fold into lexical & non-lexical incantations, bewitch the astral. through the summoning of childhood demons, ghosts in the graveyard, & mystical dance they claim a title of esoteric proportions, a title not ephemeral, but rather eternal. they realize, when they touch and blossom womanhood, energy resides above & below, within & without — all powered by the divine feminine.
this piece of work summons a me who was growing into something i didn’t dare say. it portends that i would become a grown version of the thing i didn’t dare say.
fitting a witch // hexing the stitch is made possible by Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song” & Crowley’s “Book of Law.”
About the Contributor(s)
jacklyn janeksela is a wolf and a raven, a cluster of stars, & a direct descent of the divine feminine. she can be found. she is in a post-punk band called the velblouds. her baby @ femalefilet. she is an energy. find her @ hermetic hare for herbal astrology readings.
The covers for “Incantations,” The Operating System’s 5th Annual Chapbook Series, were designed by Lynne DeSilva-Johnson [Elæ Moss] using original drawings by artist Barbara Byers, from her long running “Asemic Series.”
Elæ Moss is a multimodal artist-researcher, curator, designer, and educator. Seeking Speculative Solidarities, they employ analog and digital media to investigate human, institutional and ecological systems and to iterate open source strategies for ecological and social change. Recent projects have shown at La Mama Galleria, EFA Project Space, STWST/Ars Electronica, Usdan Gallery, Judson Church, the Segal Center, SOHO20, Dixon Place, and the Exponential Festival, among others. Select publications include Big Echo, Tagvverk, Vestiges, Matters of Feminist Practice, The Transgender Narratives Anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, and Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. Books include Ground, Blood Altas, Overview Effect, Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, Bodies of Work, and The Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Guide. Moss is a Professor at Pratt Institute, and the developer / founder of the Operating System + Liminal Lab. More at: https://onlywhatican.net and https://theoperatingsystem.org.
