Diary of the Ghost of a Mestiza

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                                           Written in the sorcerer’s house mis palabras

are a mutilated palace
                                           spread across a lake.

                      Elliptical pyramid. Oval. Oral.

                      My words are manzanilla crying
                      tea, storming the road yellow.

Mis palabras are heavy coated coati trundling home to the jungle.

My words are great ant hills scarring the limbs of mangroves,
                                           My words stalk black hummocks.

I sleep by the yucca so my words can taste licorice all night.

                      Mis palabras are mistletoe tangling chechem trees,
                      they fill the wood collector’s bicycle cart.

Mis palabras are electrified seashells torching the dirt path
to the village smelling of dinner fire.

                                              They are crisp leaves of poison underfoot.

     My words are plants
     blooming only on moonless nights. They say

let the land stay
     and the ruin stay ruined.

                    Let the vines come
          and reptiles make their slow way across the dry earth.

     Let great birds of hallucination return, and jaguars

                                                             take back the forest.

Let us, the ruthlessly
human, retreat.

Read other poems from What Nature here.