This Is a Prayer to Baba Yaga. This Is a Prayer for Resistance

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This is a prayer for Baba Yaga.  This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for the magic of chicken feet, the heat of old hates, the way old bones hurt.  This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for hat knitters, sign-carriers, Congress-callers.  Old women make up the Resistance.

This is a prayer for casserole-bakers, newsletter-writers, nuisances.  Old women make up the Resistance.

This is a prayer for phone-bankers, neighborhood-canvassers, early-voters.  Old women make up the Resistance.

When the Moon is full, I call to Her.

I bring coals for Her oven.  I bring flour, to cover Her tracks.  I bring paprika salve for Her old, sore joints.

I bring a list of complicit women.  I bring a doll poked with pins and bound with vines.  I bring a bottle of ancient anger.

“Come, Baba Yaga,” I say. “Come find me alone in the woods.”

 

She comes as she always comes: after a long, scary wait.

She comes as she always comes: riding a mortar, a mop handle, a big, black bird.

She comes as she always comes:  hungry, grumpy, alone.

 

“Old One,” I cry, “We are deep in the darkness.  We stand on the front lines, but we are afraid.”
Old One,” I say, “We are tired, our legs get shaky, our fingers are sore.”

“Old One,” I whisper, “It seems to us as if we have worked all our lives and only gone backwards.”

 

“Oh, shut up,” Baba Yaga says, grabbing all the cookies and putting them into her bag.  “Give me those for my cat,” She demands, pointing to liver mousse, sausages, cheese.

She pulls down the skin below my eyes.  “Not enough yogurt,” She decides.

“Oh,” She says, turning her chicken hut around and going way past the speed limit, “You’ll be fine.  I saw it in some tea leaves.  This all works out in the end.”

“Build you a fence made of bones,” She says.  “Write this on your wrist:  ‘By my mother’s blessing.'”

This is a prayer to Baba Yaga.  This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for women in sneakers.  This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for one more phone call.  This is a prayer for Resistance.

 

Picture found here.