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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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.