My whole life I have obeyed it—
its every hunting. I move beneath it
as a jaguar moves, in the dark-
liquid blading of shoulder.
The opened-gold field and glide of the hand,
light-fruited, and scythe-lit.
I have come to this god-made place—
Teotlachco, the ball court—
because the light called: lightwards!
and dwells here, Lamp-land.
We touch the ball of light
to one another—split bodies stroked bright—
desire-knocked.
Light reshapes my lover’s elbow,
a brass whistle.
I put my mouth there—mercy-luxed, and come, we both,
to light. It streams me.
A rush of scorpions—
fast-light. A lash of breath—
god-maker.
Light horizons her hip—springs an ocelot
cut of chalcedony and magnetite.
Hip, limestone and cliffed,
slopes like light into her thigh—light-box, skin-bound.
Wind shakes the calabash,
disrupts the light to ripple—light-struck,
then scatter.
This is the war I was born toward, her skin,
its lake-glint. I desire—I thirst—
to be filled—light-well.
The light throbs everything, and songs
against her body, girdling the knee bone.
Our bodies—light-harnessed, light-thrashed.
The bruising: bilirubin bloom,
violet.
A work of all good yokes—blood-light—
to make us think the pain is ours
to keep, light-trapped, lanterned.
I asked for it. I own it—
lightmonger.
I am light now, or on the side of light—
light-head, light-trophied.
Light-wracked and light-gone.
Still, the sweet maize—an eruption
of light, or its feast,
from the stalk
of my lover’s throat.
And I, light-eater, light-loving.
Copyright © 2018 by Natalie Diaz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 4, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.