MS. GRAVEYARD DIRT

Chthonic Cunt, by Ms. Graveyard Dirt (I & II)

Most of you know I’m Ukrainian, but some of you might not know that I’m the first female of our bloodline to be born out of Europe. My grandparents were Ukrainians who met, were married and had my mother at a German refugee camp just after the Second World War. In 1951 they bid a final farewell to Eastern Europe and left it behind for a new life in the United States.

My love for make-up stretches as far back as Baba (my grandmother). She never wore heavy duty shit, but she’d crimson her lips for church making it seem like some sort of sacred Orthodox act. As a kid I’d lean against her dresser and watch her carefully outline the thinning edges of her mouth, only to finish the silent ritual by hawkishly squinting in the mirror to ensure the precision of her handiwork.

Understanding that lipstick and mascara were still relatively modern luxuries to isolated villagers in the Carpathian Mountains - at least in the early parts of the 20th Century - I asked her one Orthodox Sunday what they did for make-up “in the old country”. Beets, she said, while running a fingertip across a tooth to smudge off a tiny pinprick of lipstick. Before tints and glosses and blushes and fast-drying-no-smearing lipcolours us Ukie women vainly stained our lips and cheeks with the chthonic lifeblood of the Slavs: Beta vulgaris.

Both to me and my Ukrainian ancestors baking bread is an intensely spiritual act. Working with and understanding wheat is one of my sacred duties, and it’s a responsibility I take seriously because I believe that grain is a manifestation of God. When I’m baking bread I’m shaping God’s broken, milled body - which He sacrificed for the greater good - and breathing life back into it to further perpetuate life.

When I have the good fortune of menstruating while baking for sovereignty rites I bless the just-kneaded dough by marking it with my menstrual blood. (<- More about that later. Let’s get this non-sovereignty bread outta the way first, okay?) I superstitiously encourage all of my bread to rise, but sometimes certain types - i.e., Resurrection Bread, aka paska and cock bread - appreciate a tender touch of stimulation (ahem).

To ensure that this batch of phallic-shaped bread rose to the occasion (ahem, ahem) I stained my lips with the chthonic lifeblood of my ancestors (organic and locally grown!) and reverently kissed the body of my Saviour to leave a less controversial mark of blessing since this Beltane cock bread was made for sellin’.