Walk with me past stalls
where images of Che,
another bearded rebel,
compete side by side with Christ.
Scan rows of Zapotec women
hunkered behind enormous onions.
When fireflies light their breasts,
an ocean sweeps their skirts.
It will carry you past mounds
of fried grasshoppers,
past voices pledged to burn,
to liquefy glass with no fuel.
This morning, like quetzals
bursting from cloud forest,
we arrive to bear witness.
Don’t these dyed geometries
hung from rug vendors’ racks
make you want to wrestle a woman
in plowed earth? Color is a god
we meet on our own terms.
Not with bowed head but erect,
eyes wide open. A weave begins
with one thread looped over
and under. Each plume,
each golden strand a covenant
with the world as cochineal
splits the hungry mirror, sows
a web of corn dream and song.
