Sun & Moon

IMG_0231 (2).jpg

Sun and Moon was published on Amazon and Kindle today. This is the second (revised) edition of Sun and Moon, the first edition having been published in 2000. Although this is the second edition, I have returned to and revised the original manuscript. It is clearer, stronger, and better than the first edition. Here is the description of the book as it appears on Amazon and Kindle.

“They tore down our walls,” Mono whispered, “stone by stone. A new church they built on the land they stole from us.” These opening lines begin the verbal adventure of Sun and Moon. Written in Oaxaca, Mexico, between 1995 and 1999, the poems tell some of the tales  of the voiceless, of the conquered, of the displaced, of the survivors, of the people who eat and sleep in the streets of Oaxaca, spinning their myths and legends and recalling their oral histories and memories. Sun and Moon traces the relationships between two civilizations, the indigenous and the conquerors, from the first contacts between Europeans and the people of the Oaxaca Valley up to the modern day interactions between locals and tourists. In these pages, some of the ancient ceremonies and beliefs, as described by indigenous people, are brought back to life in vivid images and colorful metaphors, so sharp, they can be grasped between the fingers and examined by the light of the sun by day and the moon by night. The multiple voices in the poems are those of human beings who, like the author, himself an émigré, find themselves in exile, lost, abandoned, and displaced. As the final character cries out in the final poem: “You do not worship at our sacred places … you don’t know even know the meaning of my name.”

Obsidian’s Edge 2

6:30 am
Early morning mass:
San Pedro

1

IMG0024_1

A single sunbeam descends.
Sharp blade of a heliocentric sword,
it shatters the chapel’s dark:
fragments of light
stained with glazed colors.

A pallid lily truncated
by the dawn’s pearly light,
the young widow
kneels in prayer.

Her head wears a halo.
Her pilgrim palm
presses into the granite
forcing cold stone
into warm fingers.

Flesh clutches
the statue’s marble hand:
a maze of human veins
— petrus / piedra —
this church now a rock.

2

Outside the church,
a boy pierces his lips
with a cruel spine of cactus.

The witch doctor
catches the warm blood
in a shining bowl
and blesses the  girl
who kneels before him.

On her head she carries
a basket filled with flowers
and heavy stones.
He sprinkles it
with blood.

IMG0106_1

She will carry
this basket on her head
until the evening shadows
finally weigh
and she lays her burden
down.

3

Cobbles clatter beneath walking feet:

IMG0055_1.jpg
when the stones grow tongues,
will they speak the languages
in which we dream?

IMG0012_1.jpg