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Bring Me the Heart of Carmen Hernandez

Bring me the heart of Carmen Hernandez,
A volcano beneath her breast
At the mercy of the wind whose hand is
A cold fist of ashen unrest.

The pale sun confronts the bright face of Death
And collects the breeze in hands cupp’d,
Extended, in off’ring its whisp’ring breath
To witness her virtue erupt.

On the beach the sea is dancing in time
To the rhythm of burning souls
And moves to engender the fire in rhyme,
Pronouncing the pulse in its folds;

Out of the flame the black salamander
Careens to the sea to swallow
Her heart swill’d, for that white oleander
Weeps for the death of Apollo.

In its wounded womb deep, here ingested,
Swells the poison to occupy
The shadow of a rapture infested,
Where good intentions go to die.

So bring me that heart of winded ember
And accommodate its reprieve
Masquerading as a dead November
To the sky that dares to believe,

Where the night reveals her thighs aquiver
To the nightingale’s indenture—
A lament undoubted to deliver
Where the dawn would never venture.

But to wrestle the moon will no clearer
A victor be allow’d to pass
To the darkness frail with such a mirror
Too shy to have been made of glass.

Bathing in lightning, cloak’d in the thunder
She baits the affronted pale sun
And a thousand shoulders tremble under
A burden meant only for one.

In thy copper eyes thy pain shall depart
To the darkness, whose command is
To nurture eternal that gypsy heart—
The heart of Carmen Hernandez.