From APOCALIPSIXTLÁN: A DYSTOPIAN LONG POEM

Abstract

from APOCALIPSIXTLÁN: A DYSTOPIAN LONG POEM Rigoberto González (bio) There’s a woman who squats on the sand the color of midnight, we don’t dare call itash. Instead, we marvel at how midnight comes and the woman appears to floatlike a boat. Her white tunic a sail blowing with the hot winds from the north, whereit is rumored water still flows. We know about boats, we broke them down to bones—a mercy killing. Since they wailed the loudest in the drought they had to be the first to go. We tossed the priests into the fire pit next for filling us with false hope. And thenthe politicians for telling us their lies. They told the truth finally but much too late tochange our minds about burning them alive. We tossed the teachers and the scholarsinside the barren wells, then dropped their wretched books on top of them and watchedthe pages swell with piss and sweat. Steam hissed as they cooked beneath the bubbling paper. We heard them boil and blister day and night until their bodies softened into mushand then hardened once again like plaster— a pool turned frieze with jaws and fingersjutting out. Those who held such wisdom and refused to use it were the guiltiest of all,and thus they earned the cruelest penance: to melt into the pulp of what they prizedthe most—worthless words, incompetent ideas. Despite our better judgment, we let the poet [End Page 26] live though with his mouth sewn shut. He alone keeps the story of our insurrection. Eachnight before we sleep we whisper in his ear our precious secrets and stick a pin into his fleshto keep them safe in case we die. If we awake we repossess what’s ours by pulling all the needles out.His eyes dart left and right in panic during visitations. We scurry down the dunes on firelike a colony of scorpions. We are legion. We are condemnation—promise land turned purgatory. [End Page 27] Rigoberto González Rigoberto González, a multifaceted creative writer, is author of four books of poems: Unpeopled Eden (Four Way Books, 2013), Black Blossoms (Four Way Books, 2011), Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (Tupelo Press, 2006), and So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks (University of Illinois Press, 1999). His numerous other books include such novels and nonfiction prose as The Mariposa Club trilogy, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, and Red-Inked Retablos: Essays. The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, American Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2014 USA Rolón Fellowship, and the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement (The Publishing Triangle) are some of the honors his work has garnered for him. He is Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, and a member of the Executive Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle. Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press