Chalchiuhtlicue, the jade skirt, personification of lakes and streams

An Icon of Aztec Art

Chalchiuhtlicue, of the jade skirt, from my reading, who I have rarely felt the need to expect,

Today, I have felt. This, and sitting in a church pew, the things that can erupt in an organ.

Do your plans, my plans, resemble a map of where the lines go? Without letting me go

We sacrifice our children to your consort, Tlaloc, we who are guileless, blood-thirsty as the Aztec.

Wind rustles in a frieze what I have rarely felt the need to expect, that someone might see us?

The elect and oblivious, we pore over Aztec artifacts, and like the calendar, their meaning is difficult

To export. Piecing this jigsaw desire, we weep over a display of the species, without letting go

Of the belief deemed likely extinct. According to the Aztecs, we are in the fifth world, populated with figures

Outstripping the city's maize, so we knowingly commit our children to vegetal renewal, and the difficult

Transits of Venus are now sensuously giving life to the soil. I see that perhaps you will leave me to it

Until the moment when I am least prepared, my watch is unsprung until then, you spring into lichen

Phosphorescent green burning by degrees behind my eyelids, the shards in a feathered serpent's mask,

Tumbled river glass. Your jade skirt braces in my stride and quarry for another mate. Populated with color,

In the hottest, most arid deserts, the Aztec goddess grew from Opuntia to signify the prickly, human heart.

Deep red with hard seeds, that with a sharp shell, is cut out of a willing sacrifice. As I imagine my body

Before leaning in for a sweet, wounding kiss. What remains stinging, is pieced in a feathered serpent's mask

As tourists to some exotic place to conceive of our book of blood, where the seed is supplied, not the heart

Nor the mouth, by a blue or green-eyed hustler. Indeed those who have ventured as far from naturalness—

Awake in their machines--dole out their law and ritual. Doubt, if you ever knew the meaning of the serpent body

Fringed by forests and seas, in whose rich loam I excavate. For those who know I dig a grave that you remain

Defunct. Die back into a bland exile of heaven. Let your body impart bloody veins to a pitcher plant. Naturally,

All this I say without swearing, having sworn our eternity to Art. Our plans reassembling, are the map within

And without, unlike those who haven't found this twining blue-green sanctuary, seek the grave for you

To remain Chalchiuhtlicue, of the jade skirt. She, who I have rarely felt the need to expect, is here with me.