Desirée Alvarez
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.