The Mexican Saga: a poetic journey through the 20-count
Elaine Stirling
Copyright Elaine Stirling 2011
Cover image and internal image copyright 2011 Stephen Sweet - Fotolia.com
Published by Greyhart Press at Smashwords
Contents
The Mexican Saga
1. The Meeting
Draw closer, child, I shall not harm you.
Your mother, I see, wears her back
To you and your worlds.
All well, let her paw through the serapes,
Haggle with old Jesús, whose pots
In his prime were glazed with jaguar piss;
Today, he slaps his clay for the oil-sucking
Gringos, and it hurts like ground glass
When he pisses. Aah—
Pardon me, I speak crudely.
What can you expect from an old indio?
Yet I see behind your fear a shy grin.
You followed Miguel to the jacaranda
To learn you cannot do what maids’ sons
Do standing up, and you thought
The learning worth the punishment.
Yes, Don Emilio saw truly into your
Fearlessness, and the best lessons,
Until you grasp what you do not have,
Will bring consequences.
You have something in your hair.
Don’t move!
Oh look, an alacrán,
Female, always a good sign.
See how she stills when I hold her,
Not out of fear, but—
Are you listening now?
Of attention.
The stillness of this scorpion,
No bigger than my thumb,
Has the power to kill me in
An instant with her sting
Though she will not
For she knows me
And she’s happy to show
You what is also yours.
There you go now, little lady,
Off to your next hat dance.
Be well!
Back to our lessons.
You have had two, lo sabes?
One for your right wrist
And one for your left ankle.
Do you feel them?
I see you are waiting, blue-eyed child,
For a third, but I tell you now that
The stories of three are not the only
Stories, nor are they the oldest,
And you were not—far from it—you
Were not always blue-eyed.
Enough for today.
Your madrecita feels a prickle
Of neglect across her shoulders
And your father is home
Early from the docks
To assign the maid
A different kind
Of waxing.
Let’s engage in a bit of mischief, shall we,
To round off this meeting. See how
I open my hands, lift and circle them.
My left hand, nagual, pushes away
Your mother’s suspicions;
My right, tonal, assists Godelia
To wilt your father’s passion.
Rich and white are not might.
You will learn this too.
Go now, child, and take your mother’s hand.
Be again the little girl who likes to dance
And who cries too easily.
We shall meet again, guised differently,
To gather all those fallen tears
And turn them into gold.
2. How to Starve Your Youth, Part I
We were hacking our way
Through the jungles of Chiapas
In search of those orchids
You believe in
When we came upon a stela—
Is that what they’re called?
A pillar of stone thrusting up
From a nameless green tangle
With baby pink blooms.
Let’s rest here, you said,
Though you’d turned down
A perfect spot three minutes ago.
I looked at you, remembered,
Conflict in humidity kills off
Electrolytes. Whatever.
I’m going to see what’s ahead.
Still within arguing distance
I wrenched my right ankle
On a wet root
And the pain
Shot up
Lightning in reverse
Bolting through my left
Arm, wrist seized,
Fingers numbed—
I dropped the machete.
I bent to pick it up
And felt something ripple
Along my spine
Bottom to top
Like the padded stick
Of a marimba.
She doesn’t play so well.
Out of tune. Cheap wood.
Two pairs of arms
Hauled me upright
And I met the eyes,
Only the eyes of a
Guerrillero
In a black ski mask
Beneath a battered
Straw hat.
We have, he said,
His voice a low growl,
Been waiting for you.
3. How to Starve Your Youth, Part II
Isn’t it a bit clichéd
To be kidnapped by Zapatistas
Simply for setting a poem
In Chiapas?
Hard to tell if
The rebel in the ski mask
Enjoyed my light humour.
He sat across from me
Smoking a cigar, his HQ furnishings
Vintage cast-offs from the novels of
Grahame Greene and Maugham.
So are you the sub-comandante,
I asked, the famous one?
He blew a succession of smoke rings.
No, though El Sup said to tell you,
He likes the School of Poetry.
No shit! I thought, I wonder if he’d join.
Don Emilio, he called out, and from behind
The potted palm in the corner—no, from
Within the potted palm—how was I going to
Explain this to you?—a man emerged
in a cream-coloured suit, wing-tipped
Brogues and a fedora.
This is the Nagual, said the rebel.
Though we were hundreds of miles from
The sea, I smelled in that instant the Veracruz
Market—over-ripe mangoes, red snapper
Freshly caught when wars were cold
And emotions stored in small blue jars
By the door.
I wished I had not left you resting at the stela.
Don Emilio came toward me.
How are your ankle and wrist?
He asked, smelling of vanilla.
Right wrist, left ankle
Left wrist, right ankle
He’d directed his question, it seemed,
To two me’s, maybe more, one inside
The other, like nesting dolls.
Time folded over
Rolled in on itself,
I remembered something
About scorpions and stillness
And wondered what they’d done
With my machete.
Why am I here?
Where else can you be?
Came his smiling reply.
I felt an itch in the center of my belly.
The Nagual is not a person.
He is a way of energy
Moving through the syntax
Of a 20-based system
Of cycles and convergences.
Don Emilio circled me clockwise.
What you don’t own, rules you.
The soft swishing sound
On the packed earth floor
Did not correspond to
The movement of his feet.
You own only two things in life:
Your death, he held up one finger,
Spooled around me,
And perception, held up another.