Nagualli: Simon Ortiz, "Out of the Canyon near Two Turkey Ruin"

Monday, June 4, 2012

Simon Ortiz, "Out of the Canyon near Two Turkey Ruin"

We walked up towards the sky.
From some millionth year to the present.
Cold rock under our feet
and all around us.
You breathe the same wind which is kin to sky.

Croak. Off the stone cliffs.
Crow. Black rag.
"Do you think I'm pretty?" asked Crow.
"You think too much," said Coyote.

Look back
down into the canyon, horses, winter cottonwoods,
silver stream, across the canyon, shadows,
red cliffs and white snow.

Crow slips past the edge of the canyon,
all the way into the sky.
"I wish I wasn't so scorned," said Coyote.
"You wish too much," said Crow.

Talk about life
all the sun and blue sky time
and smile.

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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.