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Veil of Colors: A Map of the ChakrasMuladhara -- base of the spineThe child wakes his mother, palms sweaty in the night. His fear brings him close up beside her. She'd like to hide him in her suitcase, he'd like to split her soft belly open, enter again that ocean of warmth. A chain of red daisies dangles between them as she traces a map with her fingers along the child's spine. Stopping short of that first bone -- place of fish walking on land, molten flame, broken catsup bottles, cold red popsicles. The child falls back to sleep with his hand in her mother's hair. But in the dream he is a cherubfish tangled in a net. Svadhishthana -- sacral Before dawn the mother is a passenger in a car driving south. An orange moon is in the sky. Between her legs she feels the wings of the salmon butterflies, remembers giving birth alone. As the sky lightens fantasy leaves her with the taste of three men: One who stroked the insects' wings while the other licked the salt from her neck, as the third rubbed oil into the small of her back. In the airport she shields her eyes from small feet and tired voices. Manipura -- solar plexus It was in the back of a yellow Pinto that she lost her virginity. But she has never been punched in the solar plexus hard enough to have the wind knocked out of her. And now on the coast she walks the beach feverishly on the edge of sand and sea. Like a Penitente she finds pleasure in the blood that seeps from her toe, marking a footpath, and in the knowledge that land this close to water is not really land after all. Anahata -- heart There is a cocktail called a grasshopper that her grandmother used to drink. Crème de menthe, de cocoa, light cream. There is a thatched roof hut in Ireland one can go and see -- birth place of her great-grandmother. She has learned that not all of her great-grandmothers were from that green island. One was a German-Jew named Sarah. All four traveled on ships across water. All four would lift A fallen bird back to its nest. All four died of coronary heart disease. Vishuddha -- throat Someone once told her she could not sing. Not that singing was forbidden, but that her voice was not melodic, that she must be tone deaf. The witch cut out the mermaid's tongue. The doctor cut out the child's tonsils and a Bic pen was punched through the dying man's throat to open the airway, to let the pure color of a clear sky in, to return the song to the soprano. Ajna -- brow Now asleep on the beach with the constant waves as lullaby, gale wind as a fabric of warmth, spray of seafoam and tiny crustaceans. A man wearing sandals made of cow and car tires anoints the mother's forehead with sunscreen. She dreams of freckled priests wearing long robes hiding bellies full of pot roast cooked by widows. She dreams of large knuckled hands wearing gold rings, of the plastic surgeon who cut the mole from between her brow, left a larger scar. She dreams of Cyclops and Ash Wednesday, pokeweed and indigo eyeshadow. Sahasrara -- crown Skull-shining breath purple flowers make a crown: monkshood, lupine, Venus' looking glass. The mother returns to her child at night. He does not waken despite the whispers And the stroke of her fingers through his hair. Hair that radiates warmth, smell of fallen leaves and solar heat. The child's soft spot has forged, hers must begin to soften again, to open the window at the top of the stairs, to be caught in that net of clouded air, nimbus of light. |
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Issue #10, June, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.