Malleus Maleficarum

Julia Gagliardi

ISSUE NO. 1 • to have a heart

I wrote this piece as a need to address the margins of my life: parts of myself I have pushed to the edges or have tried to ignore. The piece is an actualization of both the good and bad parts of myself. Either the bad parts come to a close, or they come into the fold. Thanks for reading. -JG

witchcraft is born of the carnal lust of Women

Who are insatiable

Tempted &

enter a covenant with the Devil Unexplained behavior

the touch test

my mind touches a memory of you &

I am seized with pain, fits and ravings

I miss you so much

skin scratched away as silver film is peeled away from a lottery ticket

pinched, burned, or bitten

how to identify a witch.

Accusations

& Mass hysteria

how to test and trial witches

Toss me hand-bound in the nearest body of water

pitched like a stone for laugher

see if I skip

the water would reject my body and titter you cannot sink even if you wanted to!

I disappeared with

lost items

the zipper of my jeans

unaddressed letters for Indiana

Why am I possessed by you?

I vomit cotton, yarn, pins and buttons and

smaller than the palm of my hand

a red tricycle

The nausea disappears So that was the item

I always wanted a red tricycle was I was a little girl but I never one

one because I never got one On Christmas morning what I wanted was never

there

Your grandmother told me this and

I felt the lost things that were never there On Christmas

morning I gave her an ornament, a red tricycle

Sadly for you,

an ornament, cursed,

laced with a hex of my memory

I did not bewitch it but your grandmother

cannot remember

her dementia limits and loses

It pleases me

To think she still remembers my name

& not yours

She will call you by my name and not yours

You can’t get rid of me Don’t rid of me Please don’t forget me

Holy Fuck

No wonder you left I wouldn’t want to be

With me Either witchcraft or

Possession, Bewitchment will explain my

behavior