Death Rattle

In *Death Rattle,* poet April Bulmer weaves a mythic and haunting portrait of a woman healer confronting plague in a primordial world. Through the rhythmic pulse of lyrical verse, Bulmer channels the voice of a matriarch whose rituals, rooted in the sacred body and natural world, seek to fend off a creeping sickness that grips her people.

This deeply feminine narrative unfolds in a time before doctrine, where faith flows through poultices, wild language, and sacred offerings to the Great Mother. The poems explore love, grief, and survival as the protagonist heals with her own milk, mourns through ancestral rites, and communes with animal spirits who guide her in dreams. Her power is ancient, intuitive, and defiant-shaped by the wind, the earth, and her own flesh.

As her husband and daughter fall ill, and the landscape decays around them, she battles the invisible demons of disease with spiritual tenacity. Even in death, her voice remains-a spectral presence that blesses, warns, and endures.

Bulmer's background in theology and Indigenous studies infuses the work with symbolic weight and respect, though the story remains a fictional meditation. *Death Rattle* is both elegy and invocation-a poetic reckoning with mortality, ancestry, and the divine feminine. It is visceral, spiritual, and unforgettable.