De a hueso

a flower and song

Ivory laden, pristine, an angel draped in oblivion

She winced at the bellows of obsidian-clawed butterflies

The scowls of the filth eaters;

The laments of swamp grass twisted with flowers,

As the cries of her daughters echoed.

“The eagle descended but the Jaguar remains”

In the dark places

Ravines and caves, the nooks, crannies

Where time grinds bones to dust

Old brujas cried

“The earth mother tried but eventually her Castilian flowers died”

She looked upon them.

A sight beheld more than seen.

Quetzalcoatl had genuflected before her precious bone white countenance

And the mothers who prayed in the old ways

Tlamatinime, brujas, and slaves

“For this stalk you defied me”

She whispered about the withering maize to Quetzalcoatl

And his precious twin.

“The Maize became man and they wither and die, scream and cry while you deny them the knowledge you supplied them, until the bones return from where you obtained them.

Though you paid your manda for them, you abandoned them and again to me do my children return”

Certainly we do not believe that our gods are dead

Not in Querétaro or Guanajuato,

Or throughout la gran Chichimeca

Not even in the ashes of Tenochtitlan

We recovered their bones in our goddess of death

On altares of family witches speaking whispers that heal the deaf.

She who glows in the dark of her own manto

Towering above Doña Queto’s teocalli in Tepito

While reigning beneath it.

Beneath us.

She lives between my breaths

We are one at my inhale, and ending an embrace every exhale.

De a hueso.

Dios te salve, Santísima Muerte llena eres de gracia, mis difuntos están contigo

Bendita tú eres entre todos tus creyentes

Y bendito es el beso de tu Santa guadaña

Santa Muerte madre de las tumbas protégenos a nosotros, tus devotos, ahora y en la h

ora de nuestra santa muerte. Amén.