Shudder

Eyes closed, I become Coyochauqui,
whose brother threw her Aztec celestial self
down temple stairs with disdain so unimaginable

I shudder that one's voice can be lost
so quickly. She was dismembered,
relegated like Palestinians who crouch

behind bomb-wearied walls, left
to speak of tears and truths but caged
by foes that disregard these cries

into silence. Others work til cotton bleeds
red, teach til labeled 'not red enough':
identities dirtied by authority, paved over

by history. Yet flowers still sprout from
between cement cracks where the headstones
once stood. I imagine such morbidity shies

from light because nothing cowers one human
like the timbre of another and our waking
hours birth voices like pinpricks of rain -

only in a quiet midnight can anyone hear
lost voices. And who am I to receive forgotten
fruit, these cries left out of the dialogue:

whipped pyramid builders, hand claspers,
drunks of union, labored by a fate that
darkness whispers into my consciousness?

Eyes closed, I see her arms and legs
left like omens for those who dare,
people with whom I share molecules of air

and I can not sleep,
can not sleep,
can not sleep.