Of Being Numinous

Once upon a time in Chicagoland there were three witches who found each other by accident. Not really. They were meant to find each other, pure and simple. A synchronicity. A no-brainer. Fate. Something terrible had happened to a woman in an alley in Ravenswood and these three—one poet, one visual artist, and the one who called herself Cobalt or Thalo (always blue), who was both artist and poet—decided to do something about it. So they created a stencil of a woman in supplication that resembled a woman during the time of the Inquisition, and they proceeded to paint her all over Chicago. It was illegal, but not as illegal as rape, and they were careful to only stencil places where they knew women had been hurt, or places where men might see the figure and feel some fear deep deep inside; in any case, places where women would never be hurt again. They felt no guilt that they were spraying paint on the sides of churches and benches, on sidewalks and stores, and they didn’t care if they got caught. They never did.

Maureen Seaton is the author of two dozen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative, most recently, UNDERSEA (JackLeg, 2021) and Sweet World (CavanKerry, 2019), winner of the Florida Book Award. Honors include Lambda Literary Awards for both lesbian poetry and memoir, the Audre Lorde Award, NEA and Pushcart. She was voted Best Miami Poet, 2020, by the Miami New Times.