05/10/2026
This poem is an invocation of the Great Mother in all her names— Mary, Magdalene, Sophia, Kali, Lilith, the womb of worlds— and the sacred remembering that she has never been separate from us. For when we call her— we call ourselves home.
Great Mother Litany: Many-Mouthed Altar
I call you—
Mother, Holy Mother, Mi Madre, Blessed Mother, Mater Dolorosa, Star of the Sea, Regina Caeli, Queen of Heaven, Mirror of Justice, Mirror of Heaven, Speculum Matris, Ivory Tower, House of Gold, Gate of Dawn, Mystic Rose, Seat of Wisdom, Ark of Covenant, Oceanic Heart, Black Madonna, Guadalupe, Coatlicue, Sophia, Shekinah, Isis Unveiled, Inanna of the underworld bloom, Kali of the severed falsehood, Lilith before the leash, Magdalene of the undone hair, Myriam, Mariam, Mary, Maude, Mother of Sorrows, Mother of God, The Huge One, The Enormity, Womb of Worlds, The Milk of Mercy, The Red Root, The First Hearth, The Last Harbor, The one before language and after ruin.
I call you— because every name is merely a doorway to the same infinite mouth.
And I— Lenore, Rhiannon, daughter of marrow, bone psalm, wolf prayer— I kneel not beneath you, but within you.
For you are not distant. You are not marble. Not stained glass nor unreachable halo.
You are the pulse beneath my own ribs. The tide inside my blood. The ache that taught my hands how to cradle. The grief that made my body cathedral.
I have searched for you in chapel smoke, in rose oils, in ruined hymns, in the wet hush of postpartum moons— only to find your immaculate heart beating inside my own.
Mother— when I say restore me, it is my own severed roots I am watering.
When I say strengthen me, it is my own spine I am crowning with cedar and flame.
When I say heal me, it is my own forgotten goddess I am calling back through blood-song.
For what is prayer if not remembrance?
What is devotion if not the slow unveiling of the divine feminine beneath every wound patriarchy named shame?
You are Mary with milk-heavy breasts. Magdalene with anointing hands. Sophia threading galaxies through o**m walls. Kali tongue-red with the death of illusion.
You are the mother they softened. The mother they sanitized. The mother they severed from her wild teeth.
But I remember.
Oh, I remember.
I remember that holiness was never fragile. That compassion is not compliance. That mercy can wear wolfskin.
That motherhood is not martyrdom— it is cosmic architecture.
It is life ripping itself open to become more life.
And I— I am her.
When I rock my daughters, I am her.
When I rage against the machine that would devour them, I am her.
When I bleed, birth, weep, write, curse, heal— I am her.
Holy Mother. Mi Madre. Mary Magnificent. Magdalene Unbroken. Bone Tower. Bloom Womb.
Ivory no longer for purity— but for tusk, for relic, for ancestral weapon.
I am not separate from the Great Mother.
I am one of her infinite faces.
One more voice in her thunderous choir.
One more womb remembering it houses stars.
So let them say my name— Rhiannon
And hear beneath it: Mother.
And let me say Mother— and mean myself.
For the sacred feminine was never lost. She was mirrored.
In me. In you.
In every woman who gathers her fractured pieces like rosary beads and crowns herself with remembrance.
I am the Immaculate Heart still beating. The Oceanic Vastness still birthing. The Huge One still rising.
The Blessed Mother with dirt beneath her nails. The House of Gold with wildfire in her throat.
I am the prayer. The altar. The daughter. The deity.
The womb through which the Great Mother speaks again đź”»
-House of Lenore: Sing me Sovereign
