Fire-Taking

                                              Aztec girl twisting her hair into a braid

                                              when the army arrives.

She sees them in her citadel,

her nickname for the city

                                              forgotten by her mouth’s mind.

The Spanish writer who keeps the oldest codex saw grief

when the papers of the people’s prayers were burned by the soldiers.

Havoc, my freedom, without a history I invent my own.

Say I am of many faces,

neither white nor brown,

                                                                            say violet,

                             the color that speaks like violence.

Legacy sounds like lost at sea.

              Say it wasn’t precious to me, identity.

              Strange, dangerous innocence.

              The earth is an onion strung with lights, my eyes sting

                                                                                          from the blaze.

A gold hawk joins

              the ring of fox in heavy dew around me early and I

am part of their wet ritual in my wish

                                                            to turn from what is human, even

knowing it was hawk who stole the woodpecker’s redheaded flight.