Kali Meets Medusa

by Anna Ruiz

Oh how I have been seduced by this
stale bread of life!
billions of incarnations
have left me awkward,
like a newborn
fawn, guarded by secret,
lush thickets
of deeply
held animal lust,
but you see, in my self-immolating
dragon’s play
passion’s embers seldom die,
fire is but the next breath away,

and the crown of thorns is a flower
that grows close to the heart of bewilderment
transfixed in the all-seeing eye

by the sea, by that terrible torment of a sea,

... the wind came to me tousled my hair,
lying in the still carpet of another dawn
as skin crawled over
raven bones, whispered of fish drowning in
an avalanche of jealous water,

but I am a woman now, a crone hunchbacked
and pregnant with life,

serpents, like tender babies, crawling over my
bowed head.