Michael Zendejas

In Tenochtitlan, Someone Told Me

‘In Lak’ech
Ala K’in.’ *
I have felt drums
beneath the earth,
the dark
caked with dirt,
volcanic rocks 
for pyramids, mirrors,
knives.
I have seen faces 
protected by jade
and amber
the wisdom of stone.
I have tried crossing 
into yesterday,
past skeletons 
holding clay pots,
dirt paved 
into a path 
that ends
in some unknowable place—
but my days grow 
shorter.
Sometimes
I wonder
if it’s always been this way,
fighting jaguar nights
hoping for songs 
to fill the silence.
The dark is alive
with the sound, 
always growing.

* Mayan for “I am you and you are me.”

Michael Zendejas is the Senior Hybrid Acquisitions Editor for Abode Press. He received a Fiction MFA at UMass Amherst and runs the film blog, The Chicano Film Shelf. An inaugural recipient of the Rose Fellowship, a Juniper Fellow, a 2022 winner of the James W. Foley Memorial Prize and a member of the inaugural cohort of the Emerging Writers Fellowship, he consults and teaches classes on Fiction, Poetry and Screenwriting via GrubStreet. His work is featured or forthcoming in: Stanchion, North American Review, Unstamatic and elsewhere