Issue 0005: The Witch
MAD: No newsletter series
Photo: A Witch
Me, 1989
MISSED AMERICAN DREAMS
A NO NEWSLETTER SERIES
ISSUE NO. 005 | OCTOBER 2026
...Maybe strangers, maybe fans, most definitely my parents, the people who graciously signed up to receive this or accidentally are receiving this. Thank you for being here.
First.
How are you?
How's your heart?
How's your brain?
Did you eat?
As the leaves start to turn...
...and the air turns crisp, the long summer nights, hot, damp skin, and constant buzz of air conditioners wither in our memories, and the veil begins to thin. The soft whispers of summer darkness turn into long, screaming winter nights.
The underbelly of society grows louder, and the ripe summer fruit starts to rot. No more singing and dancing in the streets to celebrate long-overdue champions. Instead, we are flooded with routines, school schedules, busy work lives, and the reminder that along with the light come many shadows.
Wow! I don't know about you, but when October hits, I go dark. The piece below was an attempt to go straight into the darkness, and what came through was actually light, hope, power. I love riding the power of the witch. She is afraid of nothing and can turn everything into magic. She scares me a bit, but I trust her.
I hope you choose to read and head into the underbelly with me. Then let me know: do you discover any magic?
THE WITCH
Her feet spread wide against the dark, wet soil. Her calves large, her hips wide and low, her belly hanging heavy, pushing way out beyond her thighs. Her breasts feel like heavy watermelons, or water balloons. As she walks, the earth rumbles, like with the weight of 10,000 giants stomping.
She is a witch.
She has been casting spells since she could see. In fact, maybe even before. In the womb, in the dark, as her mother forgot to pray, she spoke to the energies behind the veil. This is where she felt the safest.
You may think I am describing a pregnant, fertile, beautiful woman. Ripe with new life. NO! I am describing me.
A 42-year-old woman living in Brooklyn.
My feet are wide, yes, from the weight of my belly and widening hips, but not because I have life growing inside, but because I have rot and piles of guilt and fear and politics and assault and environmental crisis and waste and rats and cockroaches and parasites hanging in my belly. Sucking from me like leeches, and the more they suck, the more my belly swells and my breasts round.
It is very strange to feel pregnant, but with the dead. With the lifeless waste that lives inside my body.
Lately, as I fill my brain and body with filth and consume more to trap in my cauldron, I have been being promoted remedies for parasites. Long worms feeding off my gut, feeding off my life force. It used to make me squirm and feel disgusted. Yet now I welcome it.
I am woman, I am WITCH of the dump.
I am the cow shit fertilizer. I have consumed all the shit to decompose and rot into magic soil for enormous organic gardens and fields and fields of flowers to grow.
I forgot for a moment and thought I WAS THE SHIT.
I thought I was rotting inside to be consumed by consumerism and capitalism and guilt and greed and power and ego and grief and loss and waste and turmoil. But I am a WITCH. I am the mother, because I am the Earth, and she/I know how to turn the stinkiest, yuckiest, most foul shit into gold.
I say, send me the 7 Cornell rapists. I will crush their bones and their organs and their brains and feed on the blood of their hearts and turn them into fertile soil to be planted in the gardens of princesses whose lives were robbed by their terror.
I will take the Trumps and the Epsteins and the narcissists and villains and, and, and, and... And I will teach the little girls that their bodies are made of magic and that when they feel like a dumpster, a body that is a dumpster, they should give it time, root their wide, tired feet to the earth, and allow the rot to grow and transform into magic soil.
We have that power. The power to transform the shit into magic.
That is why I look like a woman about to give birth, because I am one. I am Mother, Creator, Witch.
Thank you for reading! May you discover magic in the dark, and as the veil continues to thin, and the dark grows long transform the demons into flowers.
xoxo,
Love,
The Patron Saint of Missed American Dreams
A Witch
My Mother, 1989
MISSED AMERICAN DREAMS: A No Newsletter dispatches every once in a while on Sunday.
Let's explore the missed dreams together.
If you want to follow me on Instagram @the_clownwitch
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