A Witch's Education

With lyrical malevolence, Serafina Bersonsage chronicles the evolution and dissolution of a literary critic-cum-storybook villain. Frustrated with the Midwest, the titular witch flees a small town for the even smaller world of academia, where she develops a crush on a dead poet and has a date in a psych ward and renames herself at a rest stop Starbucks, before venturing deep into the woods.

These poems pair well with poisoned apples and a full-bodied red.

SMALL TOWN WITCH

Well before I cast a spell

they made a witch of me

an only child in a school of sisters

a wannabe Catholic turned heretic

a lonely prodigy

so my teacher said

staring down my shirt.

I was a witch every Halloween

but a vampire in first grade

on a random bored Tuesday, when I started

that particular rumor and caused a panic.

Two children were inconsolable;

the principal, furious.

My mother just poured more wine.

I started learning languages —

serpiente — and was curious

about Communion, and couldn’t wait 

to taste —

Mela, melas.

My mother taught me early about palindromes

in this our Salem

where the schoolyard held my gallows, where I flew so that I would not swing.