The
Chickasaw
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The author of “The Tree in Front,” is Alma
Luz Villanueva, one of the
THE TREE
IN FRONT
The
children on my street, in
San
Miguel de Allende, play
GOOOOAAAALLLL
until
or so- it irritates me some
times, that long ass shout, but
mostly I love that chldren can
play outside till
In the
plaza families gather, kids running
all over till
fire eaters, drummers, mimes and
mariachis roam, a few pesos
in the hat, no Swat Teams,
cops in up-tight poses, just one
young cop strolling through the
plaza smiling, people constantly
talking to him (I bet they know
his mama y papa).
I walk
home at night,
so, women walking in pairs, groups, alone,
a regular event for them, I tremble with
joy, trying to relax my Kung Fu
gait (as I did in
realized I was
scaring people, the
gentle men who wear flowers behind their
ears). I'm still jumpy but happy, walking
to mi casita on calle 96
there's two 96 Orizabas on my street,
mine
has a tree in front where people stop to
sit under, rest, their conversation
floating into my ears, and some
times the kid's ball gets stuck in
my tree, they knock laughing, as
it falls they yell in unison
GOOOOAAAALLLL....I
still sleep witih
my Buck Knife unsheathed on my night
table (I always do when I backpack
or sleep alone). I
think of
women in the large cities of my
country, women in veils, in war
zones all over my planet, and their
terrified children- a friend who
interviewed women in
genocide said children were forced to
cut off their parent's hands. I enter
my 96
front, maybe the kids are still
playing, maybe they're finally
silent, dreaming, and I sing in one long breath
GOOOOAAAALLLL
Alma Luz Villanueva San Miguel
***
The Lady of the Serpent Skirts
Gawaine Caldwater
Ross
The Empress of desire lay upon her bed of satin,
As seven scarlet vipers wrapped themselves about her,
writhing
Spinning palatial images of sultry
days on deltas.
I paused as Hathor beckoned with
her irridescent treasures,
Cringing deeply in my heart, and fearful of her laughter,
She lay there stroking softly, abandoned to fulfillment.
“Why pause now?” she asked, uprising naked in the moonlight
Which spilled in full upon her bed
from the skylight over her head,
While on her firm entrancing breasts the candlelight was
gleaming.
Her black hair incarnadined lay with stars upon her
buttocks,
Her glinting eyes of amber appeared to conjure up a lion,
And everywhere around us now the fires burned more brightly.
I faced the Empress of the Witches like a soul before Osiris
Prostrate in the Judgment Hall, in nauseous retrospection,
Every foul hypocrisy a movement towards the graveyard.
Her dignity was greater, so I answered through my quaking,
“Are you the spring Persephone, or the consort of the
dragon?”
She smiled and stood magnetically, a moon among the shadows.
Then the drums beat fiercer yet and her seven maidens
jingled
As they whirled in spiral mysteries of bliss beyond all
knowing,
Every rippling thigh and hand a wave of jubilation.
“Come play with us!” their cymbals rang, “You've Ecstasy
before you,
And you are summoned by her grace to wade in pools of
nectar!
In the name of Joy unbounded, seize this invitation!”
That call was a gauntlet – did I dare make the hero's leap
upstream
Like a salmon through the river, over falls and breathing
water,
To the place where all is born, swimming in the clearness.
Yet through the conflagration Kali was trampling bodies
With fifty skulls around her neck, her crimson tongue
extended
To the borders of the Cosmos, with
Shiva dead beneath her.
Then Anatha's face appeared, the
Bloody one of Slaughters,
The Goddess who delights in blood, who roams over creation
Searching for that fiend who killled
her most beloved consort.
The Lady of the Serpent Skirts was lurking in the fissures
With knives of sharp obsidian, and the hunger of a hippo,
She took the spears from brave young men and sewed them to
her clothing.
She was an earthquake in a storm – Reality was warping,
Everything I thought I knew was melting in her magma,
And still those dancers leapt before the mother of illusion.
“Come!” she called out royally, “Come or be a coward!
Are my eyes not lewd enough? Does the Universe displease
you?
Would you like a million slaves to ravish at your pleasure?”
I turned and fled that phantasmal den in shame and
condemnation,
For every time I saw myself, I saw humiliation:
And still that vision haunts me and makes my body tremble
For even now I hear her call that
The
Chickasaw
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