"Skin-Light" by Natalie Diaz

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 4, 2018   Skin-Light   Natalie Diaz

My whole life I have obeyed it—               its every hunting. I move beneath it             as a jaguar moves, in the dark-                           liquid blading of shoulder.   The opened-gold field and glide of the hand,               light-fruited, and scythe-lit.   I have come to this god-made place—            Teotlachco, the ball court—            because the light called: lightwards!                         and dwells here, Lamp-land.                            We touch the ball of light            to one another—split bodies stroked bright—                         desire-knocked.                                     Light reshapes my lover's elbow,                a brass whistle.   I put my mouth there—mercy-luxed, and come, we both,            to light. It streams me.            A rush of scorpions—                         fast-light. A lash of breath—                                     god-maker.                   Light horizons her hip—springs an ocelot            cut of chalcedony and magnetite.                        Hip, limestone and cliffed,   slopes like light into her thigh—light-box, skin-bound.              Wind shakes the calabash,            disrupts the light to ripple—light-struck,                        then scatter.   This is the war I was born toward, her skin,            its lake-glint. I desire—I thirst—            to be filled—light-well.   The light throbs everything, and songs              against her body, girdling the knee bone.            Our bodies—light-harnessed, light-thrashed.                        The bruising: bilirubin bloom,                                     violet.   A work of all good yokes—blood-light—              to make us think the pain is ours            to keep, light-trapped, lanterned.                        I asked for it. I own it—                                     lightmonger.    I am light now, or on the side of light—              light-head, light-trophied.            Light-wracked and light-gone.              Still, the sweet maize—an eruption            of light, or its feast,                        from the stalk                                     of my lover's throat.   And I, light-eater, light-loving.            Copyright © 2018 Natalie Diaz. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem is about the body at play, at ache, at peak brightness—the labor of flesh. It is also about an ancient and ceremonial indigenous basketball game played across South America. Probably most importantly, I am asking what it can mean to enact light again and again from one dark body toward another dark body—to pull light, give light, sing light, wage light, beg light, eat light, through those same dark bodies. To build and then move these bodies with light...light...light...loosing them into a contest and playing field of pleasure, forever, like light sometimes moves." —Natalie Diaz   Natalie Diaz's poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. She lives in the Arizona desert.     Photo credit: Alonso Parra Poetry by Diaz   When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) "Altars of Light" by Pierre Joris "The Coming of Light" by Mark Strand "Everything Is Autobiography and Everything Is a Portrait" by Mary Hickman May Guest Editor: Matthew Shenoda   Thanks to Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahrir Suite: Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Shenoda and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038