Cold in my hands,

in this dream, I hold a carven silver pomegranate. Scarlet juice runs down my arms, garnet seeds scatter, I am bound in a ring of peony petals, palest blush matching my cheek. 

I bear white gauze into the summer starlight, I tattoo myself in woad. My fingertips are stained the color of your eyes when they have gone dark with desire, and I can paint on the mossy stones each shuddering breath that burns beneath my skin, reddening the pale. 

I taste toasted coconut and desert air, dry and scented with cactus blossom, I come clothed in spider-silk and pearls to the sun. I am blooming, blushing too. This year is marked in pinks. In magenta shading to deep violet. 

At the pollen-bright center my body lies, an invitation writ in gold for a kiss--oh! Just one kiss, to begin! I write all my longings in a shaky hand, posted to the wandering bee. 

Doradilla

Do you know the resurrection plant? The false rose of Jericho found tightly wrapped
into a ball that looks like string? They sell them at the side of El Camino Real
next to the corn dolls that look like blank bisque pottery, like my tía in stage makeup
and the lime-green ribbons for folklórico at the bright sunset of each month, skirts whirling, 
eternally crowned with the huge white silk dahlias she loved

as big around your palm that dwarfed the saucers at the cafe I used to haunt. My sun
still rose and set on you, and the afterimage of that dizzying light tasted like the slow
burn of your smile, discretion darker than a summer midnight, sweeter than cafecito 
pouring thick into a paper cup on a counter along the busy Miami streets where
we have never walked together. Not yet.

I do not talk about the drums echoing wildly through the brilliant desert night,
some days I cannot speak at all--but how long can one false rose stay curled
so tightly in on itself that it could be mistaken for something long dead? 
Even in a city of sand and glass, the rain can roll in, thirst can be quenched,
time retrieved from drought's grasping hand.

I rise again and again from my own ashes at your whispered invocation,
the walls I built around my heart spun from moonlight and flax that shiver at a touch,
the green radiating outward, relieving the strain, relaxing each limb.

And Abuelita said: I chose this name because I wanted you to heal,
like tatarabuela, I wanted you to touch the wretched stones that 
rise in each of us and set them to rest the way your eyes dissolved my
aching bones in joy when you laughed at your own birth.

I've always preferred marigolds and the Moon, so I never bought one,
never brought any of them home to rest while
I gently pour water into a hard-baked terracotta dish so I could watch
it unfurl and bless us with so many beginnings.

消えないで

my heart is a jackal in the desert night, makes a sound
somewhere between a sob and a peal of laughter,
is fencing the stars, slender silver stabbing against
a backdrop strewn wild and white. I dream the clouds are
swelling over the cliffside, the salt air in my mouth,
I know this. this dream where your face is imprinted
with lines from my pillow. where I place my finger

and trace in blood returning. bread rising in the kitchen,
my pulse is a muffled drum, the same as the breath
dragged from the deepest part of my lungs;

clouds dark against the sunrise,
deep blue streaked with gold and orange and violet
dim in the memory of your hair, the new light reflecting.
and I smell tangerines, I smell jasmine, I smell clove
rising from my own skin. water wants to run, water wants
to fill up your slant-smiling mouth and overflow in words
I salt away.

Drought

I adore the rusty colors of the tree outside my window. It's true. Autumn reminds me of you, even though I see you in other seasons. I think of you often in October, when it's warm and the sky is still screaming blue, with no hint of the rain we so desperately need. I'm waiting for autumn the way I once waited for you. I take a pill and curl up at night instead of waiting with my breath held to see you walk by.

Rust is the word, and the world, forever and ever, amen. It shows me that nothing is forever, that the very air can eat holes and pits in the strongest of creations. Air and sky and waves are trying to dash you out of my memories, but you remain, stubborn and silent.

The greenest trees are outmatched by this drought, by people who still are watering their lawns in the morning and in the evening, disregarding the freshwater clams who died in dry creeks, the frogs that no longer sing in the night behind my open windows.

I have rescued plants from discount sales, I have saved fish from drowning and from dinner. But I have not spoken to you in so long, not with honesty and the love you deserve, even now.

When you died, the cliche struck me as obscene. You are a hole I cannot fill, and I am a puzzle of only edges. If you had left me for someone, at least I could hate you. I am familiar with hate, intimate and rough and salted with ash. I am less familiar with these empty spaces that taste like blood and regret.

The things we learn as we grow older are not as important as I expected, and the things that I learned when I was young, from fairy tales and stories, are the ones that have never changed.

Menu

An isolated heart is a terrible thing. You can salvage it in several ways. My favorite is sliced, thinly, and grilled. Serve with hot mustard.

If your morning is tedious, you can use this recipe as filler while performing other tasks. After grinding chocolate, throw in the day's spices. Your heart will be much improved with proper seasoning.

One heart cannot serve two without some tricky maneuvering. Be sure that you account for all guests, and have a warm, damp cloth at the ready for each.

Today's recipe calls for the following ingredients:
one heart, washed, pressed, and emptied,
one cup hot chocolate, ground and fashioned from the shards of dreams that woke you in a sweat,
one kitchen, cleared of sharp physical objects,
one knife, rescued from the aforementioned clearance and sharpened, carefully, on your tongue.
Assorted spices, extracts, and impossibilities.

Cut bravely around the heart, severing its grasping tendrils without paying attention to its cries. Pat it fondly and wipe your hands clean. Sip chocolate thoughtfully while you gaze out the window, wondering why the birds have gathered in that one tree, and why you cannot accomplish the things you have set out to do. Grind teeth and notice you have left marks in the cutting board with your fingernails, again.

Set your heart on a figured platter. Figures of Bosch seem appropriate in most cases, but a willow-ware platter can be quite elegant with a few garnishes.

Season your heart thoughtfully. Spice is a very subjective thing, but several testers agree that the combination of vanilla, ground coffee, assorted chiles, and coarsely ground black pepper is a fine and traditional flavor. Do not be afraid to experiment or try something new. Cover the heart with banana leaves and allow to rest in a dim room, with a tolerable red wine and a well-loved paperback.

When you are tired of waiting for your heart to quiet, remove your salvaged knife from beneath the pile of lifestyle magazines and test it by scoring a single line on the wall. Do not lose track of time while contemplating the number of lines indicating every dour morning spent questioning your existence. Set this fever aside, and move on.

Slice the rested and spiced heart into an equal amount of thin strips. Each person should receive the same amount; if an odd number, consume the extras over the sink, silently. Tears are optional.

Arrange heart thoughtfully and with care.
Serve raw, with bread and wine, after the salad. Do not be offended if a guest refuses your heart; after all, it is bitter.

Bitter.

--
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175754

Ordinary Disasters

When the moon disappeared, we were flung headlong into a story. Not one of the good ones, though. The world, wobbling drunkenly across the sky, has a new set of tales to tell.

This is the story in which the Beast tears Beauty into bloody strips and devours her whole; the story in which the Blue Fairy plays cruel jokes on innocent puppets. The one where Sleeping Beauty sleeps, forever, because without true love's kiss we are left with the thorns. They slice like knives and put out eyes and clutch in closer every year.

It wasn't a hundred years before we began to break. It wasn't even one.

Here is the story in which the crane maiden lies bleeding in the forest and no one binds up the wound in her breast. The carven wife never comes alive, the nine-tailed fox is killed, savaged by hunting dogs. Here is the part where Inanna, descending, is stripped bare to the bones and never returns. The sun sets on Hansel and Gretel in the forest, or in the oven, or in the witch's belly, breadcrumbs still stashed in the pockets of the pants that were carefully cut off and discarded in the corner before the grisly feast.

Godfather Death eats and eats and never stops to admire himself in the glass at the foot of the bed. Ella falls to blood poisoning, ashes and lye and glass shards embedded in her battered feet. There are no Seven Sisters, no Penelope, and Oz becomes a dream in the poisoned desert, the fevered ravings of an absinthe drinker.

The moving finger writes, and having written, points directly at its audience in condemnation. We cover our faces with blood-red veils. We tattoo the old inscriptions with ash and mud from the bottom of the lake. We patch up our wounds with paper, the ink mixing with our blood and tears until we are smudged the color of the hole in the sky, black and moonless and bereft. The end is not coming.

The end is already here, crouching beside us in the dark.

--
For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Christine gave me this prompt: "Take a familiar book, story, or fairy tale, and rewrite the ending. Feel free to change the setting, time period, characters, etc., as long as the original story is recognizable." Of course, since that is kind of what I usually do, this became rather more of a challenge.

I gave SAM this prompt: "'You're nothing but a deck of cards!'"

The Week in Someone Else's Words

An echo, reverberating backwards in time, a bell clanging in my unpadded head.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

19-30, The Burial of the Dead. The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot. Go read the whole thing.

Netjeret

The harbor was a green and fragrant place, a bulwark against the dusty gold of the desert. There were fish and markets, scribes and antiquities. The sheep's-wool and wide-striped coarse cloth of the desert tribes sharing stall-space with the mist-weight silks and fine light linen of the river people, the tumultuous embroideries, sinuous animals and flowers of thread that had traveled from a strange and distant empire.

The scent of the market, nearly indescribable, a riot of offal and onions, thick cakes soaked in spiced honey, studded with nuts and dried fruits. Horses and baking bread, grilled meats and carefully tended vegetables. The endless perfume of flowers mingling with cones and piles of exquisite incense, precious scented oils, attar of rose, balms and fragrances and beeswax candles, the dry scents of papyrus and reed baskets, dried black figs and purple-dyed linen.

The sounds of happy people, amused or wry, light and pleasant, in many languages. The merchants and their customers alike, fat with good living, joking in slippery Greek or dark-spiced Egyptian, with so little of the solemn speech of Roman citizens, and less of the vulgar Latin of the sharp-faced legionnaires.

It was always a mystery, to him, to walk among them and remain unrecognized, to speak to the people in his clumsy Greek without terrifying them into silence. When the sun fell sharp behind the crimson slash of the horizon, and the night rose like a curtain all around us, we drank wine like madder velvet from silver bowls, drank deep. Our lips and fingers stained with pomegranate. Those nights are gone, torn like wet papyrus into shreds against the howling desert wind.

Today my harbor is full of quinqueremes and libernians and there is no bulwark against the legions. Our armies have joined with Octavian's. The remaining men mutter lies to my husband. People fleeing in the streets squeal that I have betrayed him. Hissing like snakes, their whispers tell him that I have abandoned him as I have abandoned all my husbands, condemning him to a traitor's fate. I cannot be here when he returns; how could I face that pain, the wrath of perceived righteousness?

I built the two of us a tomb. I wanted to sleep there with him, forever, the safest place in Alexandria, filled to the roof-beams with the treasures of Egypt and the Ptolemies, the pharaohs of Upper and Lower Egypt, buttery gold and carnelian. Malachite and lapis gleaming in every corner, jasper and turquoise and the silver bowls that once held our wine. I can send another messenger to my husband, can bid him come, meet me in the home I built for our long night together, but will he listen?

I pull away from the wide window, kohl-dark tears smudged along my cheekbones. The view of my desecrated harbor is spur enough to order my maids away, to pull my last pieces of jewelry out of trunks.  I look in the mirror and see, truly, at last. The Pharaoh of Egypt must always descend into the underworld, must weigh a heavy heart on golden scales. I will go to my tomb alone, though it is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I will await my husband, and we will prevail or die. We have no choice.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kurt challenged me with "It was the last thing I would ever want to do, but I didn't have any other choice." and I challenged Mary Terrani with "King of Pentacles".


This is tagged "well-mined myth" for a reason. I wouldn't even call it "historical fiction".  Can't hit a home run every week, I suppose.

Agave

I grew up in the desert scrub with my sisters all around, drank the cold light of the stars like water in winter, grew tall and strong. I took up the pen at twelve and tore songs out of my heart like leaves from my sisters, leaves we would twist and knot into thread and clothing and homes. Women dressed properly, then, tying their headdresses in gaudy knots, and made pulque in the shelter of rocky overhangs.

I could not.  I tore at the earth and watered fields of doomed flowers with droplets flung from bloody fingernails. I cried out to Xochipilli Chicomexochitl with every breath I took, and he took notice. He followed me down into the hardpan waste and kissed my scars and open wounds, the scraped flesh quivering under his painted lips like the great serpent, rising in flame from under the world.

"Mayahuel," he sang to me, "one night you will bear fruit and disappear into the earth, and all the world will mourn the loss of my favorite poet." His singing melted my bones like boiling chocoatl and we were fallen down onto the ground again, lost in the night all around us, snarling and tearing at each other like jaguars.

I gave birth to many daughters and suckled them, fitting delicate words into the puzzle of strict meter all the while. My flower prince went singing into the night, the songs I made for him sweet on his lips like the aguamiel in my heart. My children went out into the desert scrub to drink the cold light of the stars like water in winter, and I began to lose my language. I wrote in rhyme and in free verse, hymns and platitudes and holy beckoning. I let blood from my wrists in the hopes that it would sing in the silence, but it fell flat to the earth and sluggishly dried, still refusing to speak.

I churned within, seeking aubade or threnody, wailing couplets, unrecognized, into the dust storms blowing through our desolate home. I began to diminish.

One day, when the sun blazed down, drying the shine from my thick black hair, I lay flat on the ground. I pressed my scarred hands into the red dust and began to stroke pictures of the words I still wanted to sing. I could no longer rhyme, could no longer call up jewel-like painted miniatures from the arid scrub, the wizened twigs that were all the words left to me. I turned on my side and wept bloody tears, all the moisture my body still contained flowing into the dust, sticking to my burning skin.  I gave up.

The earth rose up around me like an embrace, its benevolent chill soothing my blackened flesh. I could not sing its praises, nor tell it my story, nor even weep. My body drifted deeper with every hour, my head and hair pressing out of the ground like my doomed gardens bearing fruit at last. I was dry of all meaning, drained of all my life's work, and I was alone.

When Mictecacihuatl rose from the mud beside my face, her flayed bones sheltered me from the heat of the sun, and I saw her jaw open to devour the light. I could not say, then, why it was so beautiful. No matter how hard I tried, I could no longer wrap my tongue around the iambic pentameter of the comfort of darkness, standing tall against the dreadful light.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Indie Adams challenged me with "No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't get my head around iambic pentameter" and I challenged Lance with "The apothecary's daughter."

a letter home

You don't sweat in the desert, not as much as you'd think. You're hot and grimy and you feel that drop of moisture begin to roll down...and then it's gone. It's a creeping feeling, wrong in all the ways we learned in our youth, though at least the bugs are a good deal less.  It is never humid in these mountains, and we have not seen rain in months. We have to be careful around the tribes here, careful of the roads and paths and water rights. The right of a goat to drink before a man has caused more than one confrontation.

At night, we march. We set up camp in the bone-colored light of the desert dawn and it's then I have time to write to you, before the sun fully rises and we can do nothing but try to sleep in the oven of our tents, the sour wine and tough flatbread of our daily ration furring our mouths as we grope after dreams under a molten-silver sky.

I know you wanted me to resign after the last campaign. I hope you've forgiven me by now. I spent only six months in Persia, made such a tiny contribution to our new homeland...well, I wanted more. I want to heap glories on the name I've asked you to share. I didn't know I would be here so long. I don't regret coming, but I do regret our parting. It can't take much more than a year in this wasteland; the great Alexander rides as if Athena herself were at his side.

I wish I could have brought you instead of all the wine in the supply train, though the women of the camp would make you poor companions. They are desert women, draped in their fortunes, with hawklike grins hid behind a number of veils. The odd, muted clashing of their robes and coins reverberate in the silent morning as they go about the homely tasks of making bread, pressing the cheese from the whey for our nightly meal. The complaints of the goats, and the odd tribal tongue in which they are addressed, have become our lullabies instead of the poets in your courtyard.

I think of you constantly, and wish to have you by my side. I cannot see you here yet. Perhaps in the new Alexandria we will build upon the river, the one they call Oxus. The desert people have already named it in their own tongue as well, Ai Khanoum. I am told it means "Moon Lady", a fitting tribute to the future home of my own maiden. May Artemis guard you, my love, and Hera Teleia guide you soon to my side.


It took the army of Alexander the Great six months to conquer Persia (present-day Iran), and something like THREE YEARS to subdue what is now Afghanistan.  The pre-Islamic history of the country is fascinating, and something I think a lot of people forget about, which is a shame.
This week's Indie Ink challenge came from Kevin Wilkes, who gave me this prompt: "Write a story about a soldier in Afghanistan".
I challenged Amy LaBonte with the prompt "You only love me when you're leaving".