The next series of poems are kind of a transition
towards an ecopoetic.
One of the things that I can't help but do
is think of our relationship to the Earth,
to the world, what we do to it, what we're doing
to it, and a path forward.
So this poem's called "The Axolotl Speaks."
It begins with an epigraph from Scientific America,
April, 2011.
"You can cut the spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment,
and it will regenerate.
You can cut the limbs at any level, the wrist, the elbow,
the upper arm, and it will regenerate.
And it's perfect.
There is nothing missing.
There's no scarring on the skin at the site of amputation.
Every tissue is replaced.
They can regenerate the same limb, 50, 60, 100 times,
and every time, perfect."
"Tu me dices--
You are losing the animal within.
Y yo digo nada.
How can you battle a deity?
Instead I ask how many times have you offered your arms?
How many?
How do you describe the infinite?
70 times 7.
The nervous system.
Transmutations.
Re-calibrated.
Spine re-stacked.
Eres guardia?
Or guarded.
And you welcome silence with space, with quiet.
So I must consider your revival alone.
The monstrance opening and my tied tongue to my knees.
Enseñame.
Undeed this border.
Make me explain Xochimilco, canaled.
Nunca libre.
Brain clipped.
Dolor.
A synapse lodged between dendrites--
una viuda, a retina, nulo, todo, a trucing fissure, a wand.
Olvidado es el hueso.
A chip, abandoned.
You finally say, do this in memory of me.
As if I could tragar un lago, and the cortex could steed,
spear, and war the blood.
Then you ask me--
what remains cuando has deshecho scars
and reconstruiste the self?
Gruñidos.
Yes.
Growls.
Or simply, virga gathering in drought."