Bett Williams

magnetite


magnetite sand
magnetite black sand
i got it off the internet from a man who makes his identity making alchemically altered water
treated with the magnetite sand
it cures everything all over you
your baldness, your aspergers, your funguses, your acidic constitution that causes you misery
fight the american medical association with magnetite black sand
cures cancer
you deserve to live
you deserve a body
zeolite and bentonite are like mavis staples backup singers, mavis staples being
magnetite sand


magnetite sand holds within it
all that has died in me
and what could not be born
no matter how hard i fucking tried
i wish i could put my name on it


magnetite is in the brains of birds
it is what allows them to navigate aligned to the earth's magnetic field
it is in butterflies bees whales and humans anything that knows how to find its way so that would
leave out jimmy my grandfather who had no sense of direction at all and died in a rock quarry
accident while working with his father who also died, them both dying on the same day in the rock quarry
in lubbock, tx when i googled magnetite and black tourmaline powder what came up on the first
screen was an assessment of topsoil in lubbock tx dating 1949


the magnetite came in the mail and i felt instantly friendly towards it
it stuck to my magnets and hung there like so much pubic hair
my magnets that came from old telephones
magnets in the sacred shape of the horseshoe


holy directional wisdom i found a magnetite mine on a simple hike right outside my door
i knew there was magnetite in the arroyos here
it feathers and swirls on the surface where the water goes
it sparkles the way only black sand does in the sun letting gold slip out of it
i didn't think there would be enough to make it worth collecting but me and my dog, we headed out with a bucket and a spoon, my dog especially ecstatic being a cattle dog always looking for a job 
so there we were working, me spooning up the thin layers of sand, and her keeping watch out for marauders, that among her other jobs that remain a mystery to me and we came upon a large culvert
and inside that culvert was sand and magnetite but it didn't just feather into thin layers
it went all the way down to the bottom, pure magnetite sand, i would never have to order it off the internet again, it was more magnetite than i could ever want to make my foot poultices, my baths, my hex breakers, my shampoo, the you have a body salt scrub, the magnetite shirt, the plant fertilizer, the children's toys, the adult toys, the you are not lost goggles, the van van, the arthritis bracelet, the monarch flight helmet, and the capsules that you swallow if the world was to end not


because they would kill you but because who knows the long term effects, like if you walked by an old man on the beach wearing a golfer's hat searching for treasures with his metal detector and thwap, there you'd go flying against it

Bett Williams is the author of two published books, Girl Walking Backwards and The Wrestling Party. She recently received a grant from the Idea Fund to produce a video and performance event in Ruidosa, TX, a town of 13 people. She lives with her girlfriend Emily Stern in Santa Fe, NM where she has lately been making bath salts and moisturizers containing magnetite sand.