Canto for a Hatch Chile

Black Renaissance, Fall 2007 by Hernandez, Tim

On the tongue

one can taste

conquistador's sword

piercing hides

of a thousand tribes

where skin bruises

calloused heel of naked foot

loin cloth and brass

Bolivia unfolding

If you listen to the crackle

gunning against lustful chicharras

perched among the mesquite's

still limbs

delicate as a child's embrace

you get fallout

of acidic torrents

Tarahumara talismans

strewn in a heart of seeds

To eat Hatch

is to eat Espanola and Chimayo

monsoon downpour

of silt and filament

is to eat adobe

homo smoke tendrils

of cedar and sassafras

unfurling dusk

and the sun torn faces

of its people;

construction belts cocked waist-side

tired denim & broken boot heels

sunk in red pulp of mud

where dances a white scorpion

And lift the hood of an old pick up

to eat exhaust

bash the knuckles on failing engines

curse carburetors

and canticles of Church mad sufferings

and hail the saints

of the downtrodden

eat them too

in molcajete mash

peyote and holy waters

for broken levies in the ducts

ablutionary floods

wrecked glands in the aftermath

To eat Hatch is to eat Sandia

& Rock City, Old Mesilla

receive sacred Capsaicin

& excavate the bones of Papago

make offerings to Chiltepin

L'itoi Ko'okal

prayers of new beginnings

where birthed a woman

I call mother

desert child with thick convictions

& cancerous misshapings

in the chest cavity

a single cactus flower

flowing outward

from the scar

taste razor mesh

in the holy emerald

corrugated border walls

& boot stomped altars

in shadows of saguaro

strewn pants empty

with blood on the knees

speckled like red strewn ristras

half drunk water bottles

& love letters

left to stew

in ghosts of parched dreams

where discarded sheaths of rattlesnake

slither in the breeze

to eat Hatch is to eat exoskeleton

of trembling coyote

volcanic rubble and fossil of fern

desert clamshells that keep rainbows

that mimic the cosmogenesis unfolding

of nebulas yet to be bom

in ripe plums of midnight

a reptilian abode

deep in the red, nuclear fallout

of spent bombs

smoked honeycombs

& petrified oysters

rusted harmonicas

wailing nursery rhymes

half throated war ballads

electric duende

in the seed-Flamenco!

clutch the stem

and taste yucca

flautist blowing arias

of brilliant infernos

scribing the esophagus

with the abandon

of Lorca's pen

and I devour each verse with

wild consideration

the way an infant swine gobbles at its mother's

fleshy nipple

for that noble nectar

only to be harvested

and flared forth

in the gut of origin.