An audio letter from the Wandering Womb to Savin / Wendy Morris & Mariske Broeckmeyer / 2023 / Published in the set of Tape-letters Belly full of blind highways by KAAP and Dear,…

Dear Savin, Roughe Herb, wild wort.

We call to you from the Book of Blessings-in-Disguise, from the Compendium of Female Pills and Other Poisons, from the Cook-book of Putrid Fumigations, the Chronicles of Frightening Brews, from the Almanac of Awkward Questions, the Encyclopedia of Obstructions and the Digest of Digressions. We call to you from these Anthologies of Amnesia, these Volumes of Forgetting, this Library of Books Withdrawn, we call to you from Time Immemorial.

Your smell precedes you, Roughe Herb wild wort. The stink of stale urine, a whip of leaves, low growing, a pungent prickly plant. You know us, knew us, no longer know us. We knew you, no longer know you. Yet, ancient is our association. Once we were openly connected. Wild Weed and Wandering Womb.

Savin, they wrote, abortifacient of choice, excites menstruation, brings down the terms, helps the fits of the womb, promotes speedy delivery to pregnant women and draws away the afterbirth.

Cato knew about Savin. Likewise did Dioscorides, that SAVIN drunk with wine will drive out the Partum, the offspring, the thing of the womb. And he was consulted for two thousand years. Galen of Pergamon was concise. Savin aborts. The ancients make it quite clear.

She’s gone to the garden gay. To pluck of the savin tree. But for all that she could do or say, the babe it would not die.

The aged nurse of Britomarts she gathered REW and SAVINE. She poured them in an earthen pot with CALAMINT and DILL, and to the brim with COLTWEED and CAMPHORA she did fill. That potent brew caused many drops of milk and blood to spill.

Bastard-killer. And the Savin bushes in public gardens were fenced off. They criminalized you as a Fourth Schedule of Poison. They cursed you as a diabolical drink. Plant of the Damned. Kindermord.

Linnaeus, that misogynist Lutheran, said that women who use savin are whores. And though they think their sin is secret, God sees it.

Cover-shame. Lucky Herb was what women called you. Find the savin bush and you have the house of the midwife. Maidy-bush, midwife’s herb. Tree of Life. Women knew where you grew. Invisible hands still plucked at your branches. But discretion had become desirable. Whispers of wisdom. Quiet exchanges.

Roughe herb, wild wort, accompany us once again. Wanton wenches, wayward wives, wandering wombs. We still have common cause.

Lyric / Wendy Morris / 2022