Herculean

mother’s milk tickled from her nipple
onto my palm

from the cheap hotel window
Vesuvius came into view

below, the bar where I had picked her up
fell quietly into other buildings

her baby daughter cried in the other room
I watched her buttocks undulate

as she went to check on her
Vesuvius blew its top

I felt like Hercules in a dusty jar
the abandoned street stretched and broke

the sky’s sweaty brow touched mine
my biceps sweet around its throat

Neda

Shot through the heart
she tightens against the horizon

the desert country swallows its last pebble
lizard begets lizard

she is beyond reproach
beyond help

only her hair
can still bend into the wind

the future has always been an idea
whose time has come

she has pointed the way made it clear
the meek shall not inherit the earth

The Lizard King

Climbing the pyramid of the sun at three am
his long hair sweating up a storm

bones rattled in his shoulders
each stone has a terrible history he said

a rusty iron shirt clung to him
so he ripped it off

in the crumbling Mexican sky
he pulled his girl up to the next stone

her breasts were shining like apples
in the whites of his eyes

and the pyramid swayed
in their trembling hands.

Horse

The Greeks gave the Trojans a beautiful
wooden horse as a peace offering

and the gullible Trojans
proceeded to wheel the horse

inside their fortifications
they did not realize

the Greeks had filled the Trojan horse
with poets

filled every nook and cranny
with poets

therefore posterity does not tell us
who won the war

but we do know that volumes upon volumes
of poetry were written

about what life was like
inside the rotting, wooden horse.

I Will Never Forget You

I will never forget you I once told you
in youthful exuberance

I remember my first car     Ford
my first dog     Brownie

I remember the first time I was stung
by yellowjackets

the first perch I pulled from the Guadalupe
the first poem I plagiarized

I will never forget you I once told you
who are you?

Untitled

I will put in
mictlan
the coffin of Tio Sam.
Lo dejare yotl
pixolo between the ayauitl.
Y con el tztziliztli
de olin Chicano,
mo-yocoya xochitl
de nextli,
para reir su temostli
and his destruction.
Cada lagrima de mi gente
sera castigo de muerte.
El tiempo se acerca
para que el Tio Sam
sea enterrado
entre escombros de mierda.

by Emy Lopez, Redwood, Ca.

another one from Nahualliandoing

Yotl With Nature

           Nature
visible and tangible….
el ehecatl transparente
         felt as I walk
a lo largo de una senda
strewn with moss and tetl
caresses me y suavemente se aleja
              weaving its maitl
                          fingers
through my disheveled cabello
               Hardened leaves
      that crackle y se disuelven
como paginas from a book
beridden with time….
                  un rio
atl in which I bathe mis pies….
a reflection of myself
    Xochitl de la primavera
           perfume of nature
bask themselves in the rays of the tonatiuh
    awaiting the dance of las abejas
            Yan time has stopped….aqui me encuentro
                    yotl with nature
perdida en el ayauitl of this timelessness.

      by Rebecca Huerta, San Pablo, Ca.

otro de Nahualliandoing
the Nahua dictionary is here

Mictlan

que lastima que vivas en mictlan.
days don’t begin or end…they have no sun.
hay flores de papel…piedras de pan.
ojos negors comienzan a tona,
lips sewn together by time are gonna
contar la historia nuestra.   se asoma
una raza al fondo del teocalli.
clay and straw chicanos is all that you can see.
         el valle de los muertos.
         yes, the valley of the dead,
         magueys que son tuertos,
         huey dios, the sky’s very sad.
llevan ninos una xochitl en la mano.
manana…manana, ellos, muy temprano
ofreceran la flor al mundo.  su maitl
raised high they will try again to find
the middle de la muerte muerta
y de la nueva vida.
          when el ajuah tzatziliztli
          se ha dado van a me-yocoya
          de mictlan una nacion libre,
          el ehecatl hace que vibre,
          el alma revoluncionaria.
         titlan mujeres y los hombres
         van a obsequiar vida nueva
         porque mictlan es amerika.

by Lalo Delgado

from the 1977 Nahualliandoing

Untitled

“Because you can never count enough stars.”
                         Armando Serda

“Venus was the most observed and
studied planet by the Nahua astronomers.”
                        Leon Portillo

Senoritas y jovenes
GUADALUPANOS
la reina del Cielo        whose crown is of stars
who stands on a crystal globe     Nuestra Senora de Amor
                         who divines by crystal
who shakes smoking stars out of her petticoats of spun glass
HUEYCITLALLIN
                es la luz por la ventana de manana
THE MORNINGSTAR
in antiquity is a marble statue
& I have touched her belly of smooth stone
                           A HUGE STAR
she is the brite star that seduced the poet
left standing naked at the crossroads entranced
as the Lady of Light riding in Night’s carriage
drives thru the streets of the Celestial City
                                    olin
                                    atlan
                                    apozonalotl
                                    & Venus was born
it is said in the West Ashtoreth rules the palm tree   the dove
Ishtar  a star brilla     rules the laughter of lovers  the rose
I can almost smell the perfume of her priests
nubs de incense emplumado
I can almost feel dormir el dolor de Esmeraldas
I can almost fell her negligee of spun emerald thread
skirt of my eyelids


                    by Ronnie Burk

The Long Goodbye

Her hair pinned up in a bun
picture it

(an angel whose arms had been chopped off
at the spine

surrendered a smile
its firewood abandoned on a hill)

she did not notice
the ships of grass

how they fought the wind
how the wind took pleasure in stride

parallel lines           seaports
in all honesty I can not back out

yet my fingers so modest
bend to speak

The New Country

Your lips are a country too
cities haystacks footballs flowers

secret elections held inside a vowel
who won your shoulders

I lived in an upside-down umbrella for so long
knees purple and gold

stranger really in a strange land
until I found you

your lips the two buttons of sky
only a nail remained outside

a forest surrounding its dark head
I took fruit from everywhere

darling you have no borders
to speak of

the center of your smile
self-correcting

The Brooklyn Mona Lisa

Her mouth lay perpendicular on the bed
her breath spilled saffron

I was in the quadrangle
cold segments reached the sea

when I finally ordered tautologies
my palms refused

love is sizeable you see
tossing its pupils about

the inner eye lost in a wilderness
wants only chains and electrical outlets

be that as it may
desire will not shield you from hard objects

in the morning her mouth
turns into an inexplicable smile

CALL FOR POETRY ENTRIES: CHAPBOOK EN ESPANOL/NAHUATL
And English

June 2, 2009

In 1977 Caracol released a chapbook titled: NAHUALLIANDOING: español/nahuatl/english. It was put together by Cecilio García-Camarillo, along with Mia García-Camarillo who collaborated on NOTAS, Angela de Hoyos who proofread, and Max Martinez who wrote the blurb [“Una subconsciencia indígena”].

The García-Camarillo’s became fascinated with the Nahuatl language after coming across Robledo’s Diccionario de la Mitología Nahuatl. They were looking for a name for their son, eventually choosing Itzolin; itz for obsidian and ollin for movement (Sadly, Itzolin passed away in 2003). At the time, Cecilio and Mia felt they had to do something else with this experience they were having with the Nahuatl language, so they decided to have a poetry contest in which entries were required to use all three languages: Nahuatl, English and Spanish. Aztlan Libre Press (a small San Antonio press just starting out) would like to do the same.

Antikythera

for m

Kneeled against great cities
you ask who shot JR

I move a poem made of clay
to the other side

a cup of capitals can not go far
therefore my chest is a lion

its roar in a singing voice
its gears clearly visible

my mane on the lighthouse
many times I made love

to your fragile beauty
the flesh of your thighs alarming

now it is the simple things I touch
and the old questions you ask

Put Out My Hand And Touched The Face Of God

They flew off at dawn towards far-off metal
they only left a trace upon the sea

jet fuel does not sink
enough to bother our brother shells

walking the streets of Rio
with restraint and without

you can not single out
a single sound

the ink barely dried
in a book of life withheld

we always want an explanation
we want the ceiling to hold our hands

we want clouds to shine on our heads
we want insane winds to dry our tears

if not always
we are slapped from a paradise of sorts

El Punk

He plays his part in the barrio
he’s not royalty or a dizzy actor

he will not own a taco shack
a mechanic shop

with his foot against a building
el punk

or in a car patrolling the streets
which belong to him

he will never solve the puzzle
abandon his desire for the quick buck

words are hard to come by
sex is not love as he beats up his girl

he does not change his tune
it has always been his lot

not much different
from yours and mine

El Arte De Mi Barrio

When my dog

                   became addicted to cocaine
      I had to turn
               
                             to a life of crime


                            
to support his habit