Water the Bones is a ceremony in the wasteland; a sacred libation of holy water poured out of the dry midwestern soil. In this collection, poet and essayist MariJean Elizabeth Wegert spells a liturgy for the Midwest, tracing its stories along the fault lines of the landscape and the humans who inhabit it. The poems are both grieving ceremony and dowsing spell; invocation and exorcism; the healing and howling of two fractal bodies whose stories map and mirror one another.

Drawing from a haunted spiritual lineage of evangelical Christianity: the biblical stories of the old and new testaments; the lineage of her ancestors: European pre-Christian practices and mythologies; and the lineage of an animate, breathing land of the Midwest and its displaced indigenous tenders, these poems invoke both the spirits of place and those who walk on it to re-member what lives and lay to rest what doesn’t.

“In telling a life, these poems reveal a landscape, scraping the soil of the Midwest for the magic that’s been drained from it. As these poems collapse the difference between human and non-human, they re-wild our womanhood with howling and dancing. Wegert summons the stars, the fields, and the swamps to revel in their refuge and reclaim their truths, reminding us first that “The earth knows you because it is made of you.” And then, “It wants you free.” -Caroline Harper New, author of A History of Half-Birds

“In Water the Bones: A Liturgy for the Midwest, MariJean Wegert excavates, like an archaeologist, a lost connection— a juxtaposition of the human body to nature’s body, realizing the space we believe between them isn’t there at all.” -Curtis L. Crisler, Indiana Poet Laureate, author of Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest

“‘I hold my own weight now,’ MariJean writes in this stunning, oracular work of reclamation. She weaves her way through biblical narratives and sensual realms like a woman who has come to truly understand what awakening Saul missed on the road to Damascus. If only he had had MariJean to meet him at his crossroads. Maybe then he would have met the wild nature of godd in what the author has breathtakingly titled ‘Bone Singers.’ This book of poetry will unravel you, haunt you, and change the inner terrain of your life. Read expectantly.” -Stephanie Greene, author of In the Direction of You

Water the Bones: a liturgy for the Midwest

MariJean Wegert

From “Water the Bones,” Whoever Told You You Were Basic Was Lying

You’ve heard it enough times that you

try to fool yourself.

It takes an hour in front of the mirror, layering heat and spray and powder, 

a pair of 

stiff high heels under firefly lights, lipstick stains on salad forks, and a wide whitened smile to hide all of your sharp edges.

Palatable, like your brunch. 

Forget that.

You want war paint.

Ochred and thick with clay, the heady 

blue woad of the Picts painted bold over your cheekbones—

better than any bronzer 

to draw out the fire in your eyes, no?

You tell yourself you’re afraid of insects and squeal at the thought of sleeping on the ground;

you wear expensive perfume and save up for dining room chandeliers, say you’re repulsed by the sight of blood.

What if what you’re longing for 

is to be squatting by a small smoking fire 

cracking nuts 

curing strips of rabbit 

tanning hides soft as butter with the brain of an animal you

hunted, and killed, and thanked? 

(Smoke is, in fact, a fitting perfume. As is the chandelier 

of stars.

The best feasts are the ones you prepare with your own hands.)

You remember that your heart wants to beat and your skin wants to sweat, 

You want to feel your muscles grow 

strong and competent under your skin, so you bind yourself into spandex and subject yourself to fluorescent lights, run 

in place for hours to the glare of a screen

Tell me: Does that fill the space in your soul that was meant to move agile and sure over rocks and rivers?

To feel the sturdiness of your bare feet on wet moss? Grounded as tree roots, agile as reeds?

Even your luxuries are thin and watery:
chlorine pools, cheap wine, manicured
toenails and lawns.
Target is shiny, yes. And your lattes, your SUV’s, your pop music on the radio so
saccharine, machine–

but listen.

You need rushing rivers. Autumn leaves.

You need to be cold sometimes. To feel the thrill of a winter wind

the curve of the ground holding you in sleep

you need the richness of mushrooms in the fall.

The silky velvet of lichen and fern,

the silver-light of an equinox moon.

Tell me–

how many years have you missed the music?

(Do you even remember? 

Frogs in spring. Crickets in summer. Cicadas 

in fall. The order is important.)

Every once in a while you notice what your heartbeat skips, so you turn on the country music station 

full-blast, roll your windows down on a blank stretch of road 

buy a pair of fake cowboy boots that will never see mud.

You think the occasional toungeful

 of wild 

can satiate your thirst for 

the draught you were meant to drink to the dregs?

You surely know this by now, if you’re still here:

Zumba won’t cut it, in the end

you need late nights, howling at the moon

you need dancing, uninhibited, to the bonfire and the drum-beat 

you need the poetry of 

your grandmother, 

of her grandmother 

the wisdom of herbs, of bones.

That wisdom is still strung like pearls inside every cell of your own body

and the magic you’re meant to make is as close at your fingertips 

as the diamonds flashing on your hands.