“And that god snuffed out their day of return.” —Homer, The Odyssey, Book I
During the Mexican Revolution, Zapatistas
Caused the extinction of the DoDo
Xochimilco, subfossil extraction for oil from remains
Fallen like leaves crumpled with coasts of flesh.
To fathom—the canals, they say, or famine or remains,
laid bare the hair on their foreign grown chest, (among these, a dried head)
nationalism don’t make things easier
the whole tide was black.
Atop fields ancestors, unproven beyond a reasonable doubt,
the rhododendron ghosts falsify records,
they are a leaf carried on the back of the Paleogene-Neogene
break open & slip undeportable, before
rebels with one cause, to screech
one more time. Flightless, unkillable, plumaceous back claws.
There is a barrio where the Mermaids fought nets.
There is a pueblo where the waves merged with industrial-size Pirate Ships.
There is an Undiscovered City in the slippery rim called the Supernatural.
Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan Andrew Pérez.
