Water the Bones: a liturgy for the Midwest (North Meridian Press)

By MariJean Wegert

Water the Bones is a ceremony in the wasteland; a sacred libation of holy water poured out of the dry midwestern soil. In this collection, poet and essayist MariJean Elizabeth Wegert spells a liturgy for the Midwest, tracing its stories along the fault lines of the landscape and the humans who inhabit it. The poems are both grieving ceremony and dowsing spell; invocation and exorcism; the healing and howling of two fractal bodies whose stories map and mirror one another. Drawing from a haunted spiritual lineage of evangelical Christianity: the biblical stories of the old and new testaments; the lineage of her ancestors: European pre-Christian practices and mythologies; and the lineage of an animate, breathing land of the Midwest and its displaced indigenous tenders, these poems invoke both the spirits of place and those who walk on it to re-member what lives and lay to rest what doesn't. About the author: MariJean Elizabeth Wegert is a post-evangelical Christian turned intersectional abolitionist, animist, mystic and theology pirate. She has studied English, rhetoric, and creative writing, graduating with a masters in English in 2022, and currently makes a living as a ghostwriter. Her writing contemplates the poetics of place, weaving ecology, metaphor, and myth; as well as studying the consequences of ideologies of shame and disconnection from dirt, story, and the animate world. She grew up along the Portage River in Ohio (Peoria and Kickapoo land), gathering herbs and conjuring spirits in the woods behind her house. Not much has changed. Currently, she writes from occupied Peoria and Potawatomi land in Northern Indiana, where she haunts the woods and creeks with her two daughters. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The North Meridian Review , Analecta , Tributaries , Tilted House , Geez Magazine , YoHo Journal , The Salt Collective , Clarion , Edible Michiana , and others.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0D95L885L
• ISBN13: 9798327200227
• Release Date: July 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 66 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"