Heidi Mezzatesta

What the Witch Knows

2019

Over the course of the last eight years or so, I have engaged with the archetype of the witch. The accusation and persecution of women as witches, particularly in Salem, is part of the United States’ cultural shadow. As with other aspects of that particular shadow—slavery, indentured servitude, marginalization of immigrant groups—there is a reckoning. I offer a poetic survey engagement with the witch. Everyone who reads the poem may add to it, offering her own experience of the witch. We carry shadow; usually for women, the constellated feelings are shame and guilt. Women have the opportunity to blaze a new trail—a very exciting but frightening prospect. Historically, women were seen to threaten the prevailing cultural paradigm. Women, individually and collectively, have to meet the shadow of a history that aimed to subvert and contain the power of the feminine.