The Girl Clothed in Tattoos
Was it summer? Fall,when night unfastened the trees,
the twigs that clutched at its dark blue skin,
obsessed over fading stars.
How long did she lay beneath the brittle eyes of the owls?
La Llorona must have turned her over,
searched her face with searing madness,
thinking her child grown and drowned again.
Certainly by the time the neighbor,
walking his dog, found her, she was bloated, blue hyacinth.
Body of a young woman in the acequia behind our houses,
deposited around the circumference of our sleep,
naked and bruised beneath the stories of her tattoos.
In bed that night I dreamed the tattoos, waterlogged,
stretched fluidly alive, clouds of ink,
koi tapering in the thin reeds,
darting away in royal flashes
as the woman’s many beauties were called away,
all at once.
Soon, under thin streetlights, the only movement
was the seaweed reaching of her hair, straining to follow.
I Exhume Our Roots, Our Songs
My Bisabuelas have eyes open in two countries,their feet walk ahead of me on the path,
a sound like heartbeats weightless as monarchs
filtering sun in groves of oyamel.
Grandmothers, in the sacred ether you are wilderness,
hummingbird-jeweled
or grey as wolves of the boreal.
When you lived, you were survivors of darkest fairytales,
your crushed languages
grew instead from base of spine,
entwined in bone and nerve endings,
forbidden to unfurl upon tongue,
hidden from those who deemed these songs
carriers of cultural disease.
Lost languages of my Abuelas,
I dig my fingers into old soil of your graves,
uncover your silvermoon canticles
buried in a Spanish moss draped
mansion of bone dust,
obsidian edged as the eyes of Jaguar
or the shadow of the evening bayou,
dark plumed with blooded memory,
I loosen the dirt from your syllables,
I chant you to life!
Freed, you escape higher in the clouded day,
dream-scrap peridot of jungle sound,
our ozone lenguas rise,
a flight of white egrets over swamp,
they rise and rejoin you, Grandmothers,
in the embrace of this frog-song dusk.
Ruth Nakamura lives in Burque, New Mexico. As a child she listened to rain birds, horses, migratory birds and the stories of the grown-ups in Spanish and English. She has published short essays and poetry in Ofrenda Magazine, LunaLuna, Cordella Press, Poetry As Promised, Witchology Magazine, The Hopper and upcoming in Black Moon Magazine. She co-wrote an Indie book of poetry, Crow Moon, with her good comadre Anna Griego, and Bottlecap Press published the chapbook Root Women.
In her spare time, she reads poetry and fantasy novels, dabbles in art journaling, strolls through botanic gardens, and hikes in the mountains, where she has encountered cougars on three occasions.
She cannot choose a favorite book. She’s a hoarder.
You can follow her on Instagram @blackberrybramblebooks and @veranotaos. Twitter: @NakamuraRu84491
Art: Doorways (to and from), a visual poem by Robert Frede Kenter. Twitter: @frede_kenter Instagram: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, and icefloe22.
IceFloe Press 