Book Excerpt: The Storm from Belladonna Magic

Here is a poem called The Storm from a new book of spells as poetry and photographs by Christine Sloan Stoddard. The book is Belladonna Magic:

No one told me
my body
was an earthquake,
my body
a hurricane,
tornado.
That my body
was and will always be
the eye of the storm.

They only told me
that I was a woman,
that I was to be
placid as a lake--
yet how can I be
human if I never
thunder, if I never rain?

I am wind
and I am hail
just as I am flesh
and I am blood.

This lake will stir.
This lake will flood.
And when it’s placid,
it will hypnotize.

Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American writer and  artist. She is the founder of Quail Bell Magazine. A graduate of VCUarts and, soon, The City College of New York-CUNY, she lives in Brooklyn, USA, with her husband and a dead cactus.

You can view Belladonna Magic on Amazon.