Forget the body of a Greek god,
I want admirers and detractors alike
to say he hath the body of an Aztec god,
that anti-twink, twin-headed snake-face,
kissing only his/herself, limbs and torso so
pustule laden as to spark the next contagion,
with the hands of pervs who wished desperately
in life to touch, and so do, with my consent, strung
in a collar clasping my neck like a European craze.
I can hear the whispers now: still trying to pull off
a snake-skirt mini with those pre-contact hips—
and at his/her age! Can you imagine? I can imagine.
All I can do is imagine. But a mentor I deeply admire
once called my people the most literal culture to ever
have existed . . . simply because we chose lava glass
to carve human hearts like a street vendor cuts mangos.
Or because our metaphor for rebirth required exiting
the flesh, like a snake. The fly in the ointment being,
that the skin was, well, human. Only one fly,
and you call that an ointment?! You’ll need much more
to unlock goddess status. You can’t go skimping
on the good goop, the paste of crushed jade
mortared to ambrosia, the immortal guac concoction I
spread over my face as part of my nightly
beauty routine—that which you call a death mask
in your museum of death.

//

Author’s Commentary:

The statue of Coatlicue, the Aztec “mother of the gods,” at the Museo Nacional de Antropololgia embodies the duality of destruction and creation. The artist of the statue, whose name is lost to genocide and colonization, chose an ingenious way to depict the harmony of this seeming contradiction. For example, after beheading, the two ropes of blood that rushed out of her neck form two separate snake heads, but these snake heads also face each other in such a way as to form one single head when viewed from the front or the back. That is, one eye from each individual snake head contributes to a third face created by their union. A third bifurcated tongue is created from each snake head’s individual tongue. Each head’s singular fang viewed from profile becomes a set of fangs for the new head. This badass is restored through her own destruction. Her story, and the story of this specific statue (which is an incredible journey in its own right but too long to do justice to here) is one of survival through creativity. The artistry of native perspectives is often ignored by the western gaze due to what is deemed as savage or gory (ignoring the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity or even the macabre iconography within Christian traditions). I wanted to write a poem of reclamation.