The Goddess
Cozumel, Mexico
So says the myth: women who come
to the temple of Ixchel will be blessed
in marriage and fertility. I arrive
having left a man behind, having nothing
to be blessed or cursed, simply acknowledged.
He erases all trace of me these mornings,
raking fingers through soaped water
to scrub my perfumed sheen off everything,
a fury of long hair swept in a dustpan—
while faraway I kneel, my burnt shins on stone,
breathing salt in the air,
that roiling Caribe behind me.
Seven years we surpassed all odds: his love
for chicken wings and every sport,
sleeping as late as possible while I awoke ready
to gnash through life like a rabid coyote.
Didn’t he know I’d flee somewhere
like Mexico, bleach my hair, forego
modern appliances to lean my bronzed back
on prickled stucco while the guy pushing paletas
spritzes my face with water?
The men here call me Sarita bonita.
Each kisses my palm and offers me fruit.
by Sarah Sweeney
So says the myth: women who come
to the temple of Ixchel will be blessed
in marriage and fertility. I arrive
having left a man behind, having nothing
to be blessed or cursed, simply acknowledged.
He erases all trace of me these mornings,
raking fingers through soaped water
to scrub my perfumed sheen off everything,
a fury of long hair swept in a dustpan—
while faraway I kneel, my burnt shins on stone,
breathing salt in the air,
that roiling Caribe behind me.
Seven years we surpassed all odds: his love
for chicken wings and every sport,
sleeping as late as possible while I awoke ready
to gnash through life like a rabid coyote.
Didn’t he know I’d flee somewhere
like Mexico, bleach my hair, forego
modern appliances to lean my bronzed back
on prickled stucco while the guy pushing paletas
spritzes my face with water?
The men here call me Sarita bonita.
Each kisses my palm and offers me fruit.
by Sarah Sweeney
Sarah Sweeney's poetry and essays have appeared in Rattle, Quarterly West, Pank, Thrush Poetry Journal, Barrelhouse, and others. Her manuscript about growing up in the South was a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard Poetry Series and she has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, and a Pushcart nomination. She lives in Boston, where she writes for the Harvard Gazette and travels often to Latin America, chronicling her journeys at www.loosegringa.com.