I build an altar, parade in the streets
**** on a sugar skull, stamp on your grave.  
I want to weep, but instead I write
words like skeletons that leap and click their heels
grinning with jaws of orange like choked marigolds.

I wear a warren of jade, a den of ivory, a lair of shells
to wake the dead with a dance.

Why do the catrinas resemble you as you live?
Why do the calaveras still smile and tip their
top hats mockingly at your tombstone?
  
Alone in the colors and candles, I row this mariposa
dipping my paddle like sugarcane in taffy
reverberating grief like a sack of chattering teeth.

From Ocotepec to Patzcuaro, masks mourn
their losses, stars are pulled from the night
islands are invaded, bones rattle like marionettes
bells seek their towers, corpses leave their caskets
crosses fly like kites, feet clap in a frenzy
mayors deliver speeches, waves stutter ponderously
souls are exhumed from tobacco smoke
yellow ribbons cascade from the deaths heads
and we all dance like madmen, the dead grieving
the living and the living grieving life.

Is this the red chaos that you gulped down, the
dagger that distended your stomach?
Who draws from the pail that draws from your well?

Your body is half water.
You will rise with the moon and pass as we all dance like madmen.