So this is a new anthology that came out
from Davis, California.
Escritores Del Nuevo Sol, Writers
of the New Sun, which was another group that Francisco
started.
Francisco, wherever he went, he started a writers' group.
So this writers' group hasn't had an anthology for 13 years.
But finally, it came out with an anthology of work.
And so I'm going to read the pieces that
were chosen by the editor.
This one's called "Seven Stories from Seven Heavens."
"One.
La Calaca, still inhabited by life shadow,
morphed into a ballet dancer to dance back into life.
Danced until she unwound her spirit's fete of life,
never ends.
Though alive, she'll never be again.
Calaca dances to remember all life's sweetness,
because a time released life passes quickly.
Two, train whistles always remind her of him,
his attention to details, about the woman
she'd become, all those years later.
How she's fortified those walls he'd
mistaken for shyness or fear during their time
in the back when.
No, those walls were solid until he knocked them down.
Three, for Chief Theresa Spence of the Attawapiskat First
Nations Canada.
People might have remembered her.
She's the one who fasted against the Keystone Pipeline.
Spirit tree tied with sacred direction colors,
prayer offerings full of hopes and dreams.
Fears are kept at bay by sacrificing and opening
to the possibilities of prophecy.
Fulfilled wishes for better days of promise,
a cleansing snow covers the sleeping ground,
waiting for the first awakening of green.
Four, was a sassafras moon brought them together.
They met one early evening, the satellite barely showing
its toothy smile, full of promising newness
in the mid-autumn sky.
She walked into the root man's shop looking for something,
but couldn't remember what after seeing him standing there
staring at her.
Five, at Celestún, Ekʼ Balam watches through mangroves.
The trees, whose tangled roots centuries
stuck in the muddy island swamps, also
home to crocodile, owl, turtle, and these magnificent
scarlet-headed beings who weighed this estuary, where
turquoise salty ocean meets fresh currents to form
the jade green inlet.
Six, the stream is still as glass.
Earlier, north winds blew, her waters rushing.
She stands at the shore and cries,
wanting light instead of heat, love instead of hate,
poison daggers thrown in words, wishing different outcomes
for her mother's life.
She offers seven guavas, fragrant of Cuba.
Seven, hummingbirds dance over intense currents of air,
lightly navigating as if with no effort, whirling light spirals.
The shape of life, the sacred mothers
symbolized in tiny bodies.
Supreme power concentrated in these small entities,
delicate but deadly are we the women."