Eight Omens before the Destruction of the Empire

Abstract

Eight Omens before the Destruction of the Empire Willy Palomo (bio) Where Dead Warriors Tell Us of the Illuminati We knew they were brutes when they first saw our temples and grew nervous by its glory, its gold, its gold, its bloodthirsty gold. A decade before the blade drew its thousand grins grim across our chests, years before bellies split wide as the jaws of women in labor and hollered us hollow, we were lords of feather and gold, our gods enflamed, erupting from our veins, the city walking on water like a nation of crooked Christs. Fuck you know bout sacrifice? Our queens punched barbed rope through their tongues and rapped to gods. We mean We built our nation where our god of war and sun took us, a land where the eagle took the serpent writhing in its beak and broke its back, a land where our men were the eagles and everyone else writhing. Before, we couldn't recognize their language, their signs. But now we see them everywhere. Their badges. Their All-Seeing Eyes. Even the spangled stars. it when we say we gave our hearts to el pueblo. After birth, our elders buried our umbilical cords in battlefields, where all heroes are born, donned in eagle feathers and jaguar skin. Who were we to fear fire and foreigner when our monsters demanded our lives on the altar? No, we feared nothing made of blade and blood. What we feared were the pyramids bursting in the sky, larger than the ancient Tlachihualtepetl, the eye at its apex weeping fire as it murdered the stars. It was like a flaming ear of corn, or a fiery signal, or the blaze at daybreak. It seemed to bleed fire, drop by drop, like a wound in the sky. ¿Was it you,0 Xiuhcoatl, atlatl of our god, shot from the sky to smite us? We recognized your slither, your snake of smoke and flame, the raid and ransack to follow. We fear the way they stole a year's worth of night and revealed our secrets, the ways we fucked until we sobbed unwillingly into women's breasts, the way our nightmares became endless as we lost sleep, staring into the pyramids' blind blue eyes, the snakes of light pillaging the sky, burying the night in so much gold we became paupers, begging one another for darkness, the mercy of an eye shut to our squalor. It cut open the sky, without obsidian or flint, and burned the heart of the heavens in front of all to see, our nation, our god. [End Page 129] Where the Flame Speaks hummingbirds ripple like dartsthrough my hair a giant wing brandishing its bladed tips against the jeweled throatof night watch me soar raise my quicksilver skirt to the heavens & leave the city in fevera downpour of river & rainwater at my feet for me to splash & evaporate swallow my ashi dare you reach for my heart i am the nation you sacrifice for your comfort who cooks your foodlicks the floor clean of your dust i am a protest you cannot touch my hands clap & the cityloses a temple i do not believe in non-violence this burning in my belly is all i haveever known in my mouth a thousand burning feathers alight [End Page 130] Where El Pueblo Laments In a rain so humid it hums like a bug woozy with sugar & blood, whistlinginto the corners & pits of the body —it struck, another fire, another god without thunder or bolt, only its red lipsblistering rumors into the veins of night. The street stripped to its soot, eyes sucked black by the sun. This is whatwe all look like beneath our thatched temples & makeshift prayers: gods lost in ahistoric ash,the meanings of our own names forgotten in unyielding bedrock. Now I bow to any greatness willingto cut the hunger out my mouth, who will give me a myth for each misery, a song to soften the sorrow,who knows when to abandon me to my godlessness until I surrender to the gut-glittered altar where bothrain & flame are...