Imagine the depths of your infant American hubris, you bearded doofus:
“We will conquer this wilderness. It will not conquer us.”
Tough luck, paterfamilias. A black goat commands
your children’s spirits, his curved horns aimed to gore
the nearest patriarch unafraid of the old world horrors
of the woods. He commands a coven of vvitches bathed
in your baby’s blood & the light of an impossibly enormous moon.
You will meet Black Phillip soon, so clutch your holy axe

and ask yourself how you would respond to the goat’s temptation.
Wouldst thou like the taste of butter, a pretty dress?
Wouldst thou like to live deliciously? Ask the goat to guide
your hand as you sign your name in the mystic book.
He’s ceremonially holding court in the backyard barn
before the real party starts in the woods. Black Phillip’s whispers
to Thomasin are far from empty promises. He can help you transcend
the bounds of flesh & godliness. Even gravity & New England

heat are small concerns under his hooved feet. Black Phillip
pants heavily, lazily eating his allotted hay as your family
tears itself to shreds. Nature’s chaos is not a threat,
but an inevitability. Again, wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
Wouldst thou like to see the world? He affords these luxuries
to all, not just little girls. Baa baa baa, Black Phillip,
Dark Prince of the Puritan New World. His magic is pure American
wilderness. Baa baa, so says the rightful owner of your doomed soul.

[Black Phillip is a fictional goat from the film The Witch (2016)]

-Brandon Ledet