A Sunday series from RVA Magazine featuring writers from Richmond and Virginia
Writer’s Block is RVA Magazine’s Sunday series highlighting contemporary writers working in Richmond and across the Commonwealth. Each week, we feature original poems, short stories, or essays. Just real voices writing right now.
This week, we’re featuring four pieces by Jennifer Jurlando, a Virginia writer whose work moves between fierce clarity and quiet reverence. Whether she’s unpacking generational wounds, reclaiming feminine power, or blessing the body she lives in, Jurlando writes with urgency and grace. Her poems arrive like confessions, rituals, and rallying cries all at once
If you’d like to be featured, send your work to hello@rvamag.com with the subject line “Writer’s Block.”
Again, This Week
by Jennifer Jurlando
Again, this week,
my mother asked me if I was a witch.
The first time,
I told her,
Yes, I worship the moon goddess,
bathe in my own menstrual blood.
She gagged and dropped the subject.
This week, I had another response.
If you are asking if I am still Jewish,
I am inclined to say no.
Nor am I Christian,
though I think Jesus and I would have gotten along famously.
I see the harm religions have done,
what they have taken from many,
the Divine Feminine bound and gagged at their hands,
cast as evil when she refused to bend.
Am I a witch?
What I am
is a woman
in America
in 2025.
And, Mother, I am pissed.
I am so fucking weary
of being second
of being less
of being small.
I am tired of holding in what is holy in me,
that magic that is my birthright,
issued with my ovaries and these life-giving breasts;
this feminine wisdom,
the intuition,
the capacity to feel another’s experience,
to will healing into them,
the ability to grow humans,
to carry them under my heart for months,
to whisper to them all of the secrets of the Universe
before I pushed them out into the world through my blessed vagina. (Gasp!)
I am tired of being small for the comfort of others
when I know,
in my soul,
that I am vast.
I am the product of uncountable generations of ancestral wisdom,
a spirit peacock tail,
accompanying me everywhere,
acting grand behind me,
watching and waiting until,
needed,
it wraps me up,
whispering secrets,
giving comfort,
reminding me of what was before
and what will be again.
Perhaps it bothers you,
the thought that you will one day take your place in that crowd.
Am I a witch for finding a partner
who knows my worth,
who holds the world at bay,
who gives me space to be Everything,
and who worships at my altar?
Am I a witch because I enjoy
the company of women,
affirming,
powerful,
loyal,
pushing me to own my worth,
witnessing and midwifing
my emergence into my own light,
my embrace of my own darkness?
Maybe, Mother.
Maybe I am.
Bio
by Jennifer Jurlando
At the company’s holiday luncheon,
in a Japanese steakhouse,
we are asked to give brief intros,
an interesting fact.
So far, I know that
one watches General Hospital — like, religiously.
One played college ball and hates that IPAs even exist.
One raises rabbits.
One has read 110 books, so far, this year.
One just got back from Sannnndalllls!
(We’re really just so lucky she even returned.)
Planning for my turn,
counting how many people are between Sandals and myself,
I feel compelled to be appropriately small.
A little weird but not too much.
I have given two gallons of blood since COVID — too goodie-goodie.
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa — same.
Run grief groups for tiny grievers?
Dear God! When’s the canonization?
Do I list the celebrities I met when I waited tables at the Museum of Modern Art?
Safe territory.
Tim Robbins, Stanley Tucci, Redford, Eastwood, Billy Joel.
A good gig, until Mercury Retrograde inspired me to quit that job right before rent was due.
And I was poor, but it was almost worth it because that resignation had flare —
my Donna Karan apron flying across the bar at Old Enzo’s smug face.
“Who is going to memorize their drink orders now, Cazzo?”
(Answer: Any server worth two shits. Welcome to expendability.)
I could tell them I grew up in Charlottesville,
attended synagogue blocks away from the infamous alt-right rally,
that taint on my hometown.
That I hope to use my recent Reiki training
to burn down the patriarchy with flames of rage and justice shot straight from my palms…
That this goodie-goodie will NOT be canonized for her murderous thoughts about the Right.
This has potential to turn political in a world
where I need health insurance too much to poke the Big Red Bear today.
Sorry, Che.
I’ll save this for my intro at the meeting of my company’s closeted liberals,
scheduled in the last stall of the Any Gender restroom,
sometime between the third course and ugly gift exchange.
Two more people before my turn.
I could say that I studied theater
because I grew up so poor that it didn’t feel like a big deal
to be a starving artist —
until I accepted the neighbor’s offer to strip at his kegger
because I needed money for textbooks.
That my last play was Shakespeare in a Vineyard in Orange,
where I could hear the breeze coming over the vines
while I waited for my entrance.
But that I don’t do it anymore
because I can’t memorize a single line
and fear I’m headed towards dementia.
I can tell them my father is a 97-year-old WWII vet
who just renewed his driver’s license
and called me this week to wish my brother a happy birthday.
“Sorry, Doll! I pushed the wrong button on this damn phone.”
That my mother’s company turns me into something far from who I want to be,
that she stokes the fire of my inner teen bitch,
that the 5-year-old she left to mother a broken baby brother
still wants a reason she has no capacity to give,
that her psychotic ramblings after her son’s death,
when she called me awful things,
were really her guilt
or her disappointment that the wrong child died.
Do I tell them about that brother who died,
my heart outside my body?
Or the other dead brother,
excitement embodied,
who opted for fentanyl over aging?
Do I tell them about my own dead baby,
and the ways she changed me,
breaking me open and watching me recast myself?
Do I tell them about my own soul,
dying right here,
while the chef at the next table throws shrimp into someone’s gaping mouth?
I say,
“I can fit 27 marbles in my mouth.”
I Want to Live More
by Jennifer Jurlando
I want to live more,
which is not to say I am avoiding death.
Oh, no!
I have plans for my death,
that energetic liberation from the machine
that has faithfully housed my soul these fifty years.
I am looking forward to that time when I am unbound,
untethered,
free,
when I can ride fat raindrops from the clouds,
squealing all the way down…
until I land, with drama, on skylights and tin roofs,
maintaining my customary habit of noise,
reminding my people of how I loved a good storm,
slipping, chilly, down their collars.
Their souls will recognize me there and think,
“You pest!”
I will land, soft, on their cheeks, as a snowflake,
as my dead have visited me,
bringing kisses and joy.
As wind, I will caress their cheeks,
blow the hair of my beloveds up and around,
until they giggle in bliss.
As smoke from a fall fire, I will wrap them up
and let them carry me with them.
As music, I will visit their dreams.
“This,” they may think, “reminds me of her.”
Before then, I want to live more.
I want to roll in the grass on autumn days,
laughing with friends,
and pondering the point of all this —
our place in the big plan.
I want to dance in my kitchen
to techno songs with questionable lyrics,
gyrate and laugh until I’m out of breath.
I want to drink cold water
with grapefruit peel and herbs from my garden,
a tea bag and a hunk of quartz,
for good measure,
eat chocolate, bake bread,
breathe in the scent of kitchen love.
I want to wear the jewelry you made for me,
with loud colors, or all black,
let my hair curl and blow,
walk with a sway.
I want to read all the books,
living other lives,
laughing and crying and yearning.
I want to sit in space with people’s feelings,
ease their hurt with attentiveness,
collect their tears of grief and joy.
I want to feel the weight of my skin on my body,
the pull of my muscles when I move just so,
I want to feel the fact of my breath,
the way my body moves in response to it —
expansive, rising and falling, continuing on.
Until then, I will keep an eye on the sky.
I will plan.
I will live.
A Blessing For Myself On The Day That I Chose Her For My Own
by Jennifer Jurlando
May you know that
on the day of your soul-fasting,
when mind, heart, and spirit
were yoked to this corporeal form,
by breath
and by the hopes
of your ancestors,
no mistakes were made.
May you remember,
in your blood and in the marrow of your bones,
that there was wisdom in the matchmaking.
May your eyes move lovingly over your own skin,
the smoothness and the scars.
May you see the perfection in flawed places,
the power in the healing evidenced there.
May your words be a blessing,
honest and kind,
resonant,
carried on breath
dusted with the sparkling divine.
May you receive the messages,
words arriving from elsewhere,
seeds dropped in the fertile places where they are needed.
May the water you bathe in
carry the blessings of your foremothers
and the children of your children’s children.
May you savor this sacred opportunity to
be the link that connects them.
May you treat this body
with reverence
and gratitude
and awe.
May you understand
that your words matter,
that your thoughts matter,
that your heart
and your dreams
and your delight
matter.
And in your last moments,
may you release,
with love,
the gift of this self,
Satisfied.
Support RVA Magazine. Support independent media in Richmond.
In a world where corporations and wealthy individuals now shape much of our media landscape, RVA Magazine remains fiercely independent, amplifying the voices of Richmond’s artists, musicians, and community. Since 2005, we’ve been dedicated to authentic, grassroots storytelling that highlights the people and culture shaping our city.
But we can’t do this without you. A small donation, even as little as $2 – one-time or recurring – helps us continue to produce honest, local coverage free from outside interference. Every dollar makes a difference. Your support keeps us going and keeps RVA’s creative spirit alive. Thank you for standing with independent media. DONATE HERE.
You can also show your support by purchasing our merch HERE.
