Nagualli: Yaocuicatl, "War Song," trans. Jose-Luis Moctezuma

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Yaocuicatl, "War Song," trans. Jose-Luis Moctezuma

Bell-clamor, a dust like smoke
rising. (Delight unto the Giver
of Life.) Flowers of the Shield
open their corollas, Glory
extends, seeps into the Earth.
Here, on the plain, Death--
in between, amid Flowers.
War-bound, and war-bent,
here, in the Field, a dust
like smoke rising, self-
entangles, winds itself
in florid deathly turns.
(Chichimec princes!
Fearless heart o'mine!)
Here, on the plain, Death--
& the obsidian blade my Heart
lusts for, for Death, death in battle.

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about | co-curators

Here uncoils a collective psychogeography of the Americas—a personal exploration of indigenous poetics and epistemes. With a specific focus on Nagualism, the native American practice of self-splitting and metamorphosis, this collective project (executed as a continuous exchange between its collaborators) confirms that metamorphosis is a rapid, ongoing process without beginning or end, an antinomous exchange of excess in limitless operation. So while we post here, a chattering seed grows suddenly to a green stalk while a stone or mountain teems with personhood and animacy; and we match that overflow with overflow. Thus do we redistribute cosmic energy. Its first transfer long preceded our arrival; but we continue the exchange, the extension which is likewise our rootedness. To a great extent, this is simply a record of the personal reading habits of its co-curators, Jose-Luis Moctezuma and Edgar Garcia.

Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a californiano and a current doctoral student at the University of Chicago. His studies focus on technologies of the image in poetry, cinema, and literature. His work has been/will be published by Berkeley Poetry Review, PALABRA, Cerise Press, and MAKE Magazine. He is an editor and writer at Hydra Magazine.

Edgar Garcia's poetry, translations, and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including Antioch Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Big Bridge, Damn the Caesars, Exit 9, Jacket2, Los Angeles Review of Books, MAKE Magazine, Mandorla, Sous les Pavés, and Those That This: Arts Journal. Author of Mayan Texts: A Galactic Birth Canal (Burnt Water Booklets, 2010) and Boundary Loot (Punch Press, 2012), he was also formerly a writer and editor at Hydra Magazine. An anthology that he has co-edited titled American Literature in the World is forthcoming from Columbia UP. In 2015 he completed a Ph.D. in American Literature at Yale University and began as Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.