Half Mystic Radio, Season I, Episode III: Some Quiet Shipwreck

Welcome to Episode III of Season I of Half Mystic Radio! We’re thrilled to share that HMR is now available on all of your favourite podcast platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, & Soundcloud. You can subscribe to the podcast for free, & stream all episodes on those platforms now. Please also leave a rating & review if you enjoy Half Mystic’s work, so that we can reach more listeners!

If you prefer to listen in here, Episode III: Some Quiet Shipwreck is out now—

This episode features Catilyn Siehl's poems "By the Water", "To the Bone", & "Flower Boy", & Jonathan Meur's song "Cities & Seas".

Caitlyn Siehl is primarily interested in healing. Growing up in a small town in New Jersey, she began writing poetry three years ago with the intention of bringing pain to the surface, of clawing through the dirt and excavating it before singing it to sleep. She tries to be gentle with what hurts, and it has helped. Currently a student at Rutgers University, Caitlyn is studying film and journalism in the hopes of becoming a screenwriter. Jonathan Meur is a Paris-based French-Mauritian singer-songwriter addicted to the creative process. A fusion of folk, pop, rock and classical, his music has drawn comparisons to the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Kings of Convenience and Regina Spektor.

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Want to get involved? We are now open to submissions from both writers & musicians for inclusion in the podcast! Send us your symphony. We promise we won’t flinch. & if you would like to support Half Mystic financially, the best way to do so is by purchasing one of our books or journal issues, right here.

Thanks to popular demand from listeners, we’re excited to tell you that we are also sharing the full text of the poems in each episode from now on. Here we are…

By the Water

My 13th summer was

Cold water and sand
on my pink dress

Your hands on my girl-hips
pressing hard until you found
bone

Crushing them into
gun powder then
shooting me with them 

Do you know what it’s like
to bleed out for ten years

To not even know it’s happening
until someone touches you
and you can’t stop screaming 

To make a girl a dying thing 

I wonder if you remember
the way
I had to pry your fingers off
like leeches

The way the water pushed me
back towards the shore
after
like the lone survivor
of some quiet shipwreck

Now I love whatever 
floats in me

Whatever is left
of the girl you couldn’t

kill

To the Bone

I slice grief
down to the bone

pull the meat off 
with my bare hands
until I can’t wash it
away

Will you let me 
hold your head
in my hands
fingers still dripping?

Will you
kiss the funeral 
of my body

each weeping chair
catching rain
on the grass?

I slice grief
down to the bone
then grind the bone
into powder

Are you hungry for
the marrow of me?

Can you touch me and
come away

still clean?

Flower Boy

A vision of you watering the 
nasturtiums in the backyard. 
The nozzle of the hose 
looks nothing like a gun, and 
you are not trying to hurt 
anyone. 

I used to wonder what the point of 
daydreaming about you was if it wasn't frantic, 
if I didn't want you even when you 
were scary. 
When I think about the kiss, 
I remember that it didn't hurt, 
that your bed was softer 
than any floor I'd ever dreamed 
of getting thrown on. 

I don't think that love is what I grew up 
pretending it was. 
It's not angry. 
It's not up against a wall all the time. 
It's soft. It laughs.