Poetry

dream en abya yala

by Alan Palacios

where the flesh of jacarandas shifts
across the invisible layers
cosmic fabrics tear
return us (to) the land
like a miraged plateau
hidden within our body-soul
at its boundary
the in-between cross
the tree tongues through
the mouth of its inner spirit

viajar por ensueños viajar
in dreams long and wide selves meet
eyelids tremble con las ondas a la orilla
of one’s serpentine earthly eye

i block this desert-making desire
de tejer conjuros con cuerdas improvisadas
tender como prendas viejas las trampas
de caña amarga
to keep ghosts at bay
y ver sus rostros mi lugar
con el revés de su historia

and i travel with the promise to return
no more shards
but a prismic creature

angry teeth push against the edges
to invoke the unknown languages
and i dream i touch the trace
sutured scars pulling strings

y aquí vuelven
walking backwards each moon
if i roll my tongue

they breathe whispers into my mouth
and i don’t wake up alone
i and we awaken
to return to a place and time
i never was

the fleshly being starts talking (back):
climbing up melted peaks touched by the southern sunrise
peoples (had) cultivated worlds amid the rocks
tumbling down the same peoples came
as an other
peones chinas traviesos seres multicolores
whose names know no more witness
than these piedras de nos-otres

a bifid tongue unrolls incisors grinding gently
río, ríe, recuerdo, runa,
“Is it not?” “¿que no?” “mana chu?”
formando the earth that lives
that is, always is, one-self
underneath

the obsidian mirror i smuggle into the dream
does not refract back
the faces of the past (ones)
nor has anyone come
to look into this rostro and claim
“you are one of us”
“the point in the horizon
where twilight beats the dark”

si los pasos son gajos huecos
one shall play
the dream-catching verb
if not ancient made anew
to heal the void
of knowledge of
who and where those
erased ancestors are

Appeared in Issue Fall '24