Last night I dreamt of the jaguar
I dreamed of Ixchel
I dreamed of her, not the idol
brought down through the ages
like the wisdom of midwives
and the hunger to bleed

Cut out my heart, I said, and it still beats —
a fountain of pataxte and cacao
for Ixchel
the jaguar goddess Ixchel

for her, I said, my heart is a stone
for the divining of wells
and cholera;
for her, it is a bundle of medicine;
it is the cure
swaddled, and brought forward
to be consumed
with Shield Skull’s afterbirth

in the citadel, Teotihuacan
besieged by troops of grass —
like a doll of maize, she danced
and she prayed
their every blade was bent

but in the morning I had no heart
and the Yucatan …
no Maya

[WC Roberts lives in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in WC’s own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes, and has had poems published in Strange Horizons, Apex, Space & Time Magazine, Mindflights, Aoife’s Kiss, Eternal Haunted Summer, Star*Line, and others.]