from Xibalba [Outside the water sings] by Stephanie Adams-Santos

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 27, 2019   from Xibalba [Outside the water sings]   Stephanie Adams-Santos

Outside the water sings its tortuous note, devoid of the parrot, devoid of the quetzal. A song without ears, a dry silk wrapped around the throat, neither warm nor cold but a vacillation between the two.   A hammer swinging through the aether of the flesh,   the mind's red line.   Tonight a part of me shivers, liking it, my whole body in one place, where steel drags along.   I wonder if the body wants more to open or to shut.            Copyright © 2019 Stephanie Adams-Santos. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "This poem began once upon a time when I was immobile in my bedroom, listening to the sink drip… There's a terrible abstraction or dissociation that can happen when the spirit is suffering, and in certain dire moments, like many of us, I have turned to acts of self-harm. Not to die but to come back to the body, to come back to Life, to touch base with my physical vitality through the language of pain, the body's insistence on survival. In reflecting on those moments, I wonder if there's not some small echo to the offerings of blood by my Mayan ancestors—some private covenant with the deep mysteries of sorrow and the physical self, a forbidden act with secret, forbidden questions. This poem examines the landscape of that pain, and the sacred moment of one's own private relationship to her pain and the sometimes irrational—and even amoral—path that survival can take." —Stephanie Adams- Santos   Stephanie Adams-Santos is the author of Swarm Queen's Crown (Fathom Books, 2016), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Best Lesbian Poetry. She is a multi-genre Guatemalan-American writer, and lives between Los Angeles, California, and Portland, Oregon. Poetry by Adams-Santos   Swarm Queen's Crown (Fathom Books, 2016) "An Offering" by Kathryn Hunt "Vestigial Bones" by Rajiv Mohabir "Ritual Object" by Tsitsi Ella Jaji June Guest Editor: Samiya Bashir   Thanks to Samiya Bashir, author of Field Theories (Nightboat Books, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Bashir about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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