Kidney vetch surrounds the cabin where we lie
It is an old ranch hand's house where babies
Have been caught by hand, by men and midwives
And coyotes have trotted the periphery
Sniffing the earth for buried afterbirth

We lie awake in the shade of a partial eclipse
On the other side of the world killing pyrotechnics
Fall like torches through layers of oil and gas
We are carbon based life, gut to gut
The hornets sleep in their wattle hive

W e look out in uncertainty near the ledge
Drafts seep in, chilling headlines beneath the door
Everything from black kites dive bombing on cords
To tainted sponges in the Red and Dead Seas
Seems shadowed by structures falling inward

Daily we count our twice risen bread
And pears ripening on the branch
Sacs of gold life untouched by war
Cream and smoke blow across the sky
Broken up by jets doing aggressive exercises

Fish roe is poisoned by chemicals
From leaking tankers and trains
And molds are broken for new weapons
They will eventually want to place
In my son's uncalloused and artistic hands

A collapsed uterus is what our neighbor had
When it failed giving birth for the sixth time
But the father simmered the placenta
With red wine and onions and she grew strong again
The boy drank goat's milk and is now nearly draftable

Today tomatoes ripen in this tangled garden
What light is here gathers around the children
And filters through their charcoal eyes
Let us scrape these roots and bones of wild game
To cook a strengthening and drawing stew.

Amy Trussell
October 10, 2001

Partially inspired by Alice Walker's address to the North American Association of Midwives regarding the September 11 events.

Amy Trussell's work has been published in many periodicals including the following:

Woman Of Power
ReVision
Mothering
Midwifery Today
The New Orleans Review
The Prague Revue

She also performs dance poetry in
The Bay Area, Nashville, and New Orleans.
She can be reached at theloom@earthlink.net

A Flaming Circle

scarlet tracks up the steps clawing sunrise
smell of orange and green marigolds strewn back
over shoulder bones
across an infinte path long cord tied with knots
the kind that sailors use to hold back the storm

brigitta yemaya marta shakti fatima

shipwrecked in the tidal pull of swamp
beneath double leopard moons of venus
swinging from the great tree out into the void

the chosen unknown
trapeezing into the arms of the galaxy
holding a flaming circle for the jaguar
crouched at the edge of the roof
spilled milk calcified and spiraled into
shards of white copal on charcoal
popping hearth stones orion's back

conch shell ocean cresting in the death crown
triple burner

he poured more water on the stones
and she exited as bird through willows
the snake coils around lit up rocks
reading the writing on the temple wall

the horse pushed his forehead
through the window
a song came in gale force to the gatekeeper saint
and he opened the chain of lights

THE PRIESTESS OF BELIZE
AND EGYPT CLANGED HER SWORDS
and knocked down the wall of jericho
dropped down the apex onto the pyramid
from the flying serpents jaw
and the water over mars did flow again
like amber
and we triangulated once more with a
northern star
and crystal skulls
and she set a course with body lightning
and the poles sent out magnetic pulses
and we rode the wave of time in our dance

bottle of fermented dew on the altar
waiting for an opening
alabaster statue of the great mother
opened her eyes
and we wove the circle back in like green birds

rewiring the calves & stars for new surges
from awakening washes of oceanic silver
pouring up the steps to the meeting place
another black transformer blow-up
jagged pulse artifact on the diagram
distant peak shrouded in a blanket of black
monitor lizard on the b(a)laster

grandmother cracking the egg onto hot iron
she said watch out for alligators
sliding through the canals
i lie spine to spine with the crocodile
in the pond of lotus flowers
that have peeled open from the core with solar flares
each one holding bitter resin
like congealed copal with a match head
when wrestling the serpent down was camouflaged as fighting it
and dancing held more purpose than holding the storm back
with three eyes wide open
and nothing but time

Amy Trussell