Poem by Dana Levin

Lady Xoc    8th Century, Mayan                                                                                      


You’re supposed to say shoke but I like shock.

Lady Shock.

Who drew a spiked rope through her
            offering tongue to
burn blood
            into the threads of bark paper, coax
         
            a smoke―
            
            so she could froth up
                       the Vision Snake…

Mouths.
            In this particular design 

            the Snake has two. The lower 

disgorges a warrior-god and the upper the ancestral
            general-king―

Two mouths: you’d think,
            two opposite positions. You’d think she faced 

            a breaking choice: 

            Do/Don’t 
            Kill/

                        Save―
    
For wisdom she went to a fanged mouth,
            Lady Shock.

So she could answer 
            a trick question: man or god 

            of war―
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I like
            how honest they were, the old

            tribes. 

Look how she kneels
            in tranced adoration, the long spear pointed 

            at her brow.



from Banana Palace, (Copper Canyon Press 2016)

Dana Levin’s fourth book is Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). Previous collections include In the Surgical Theatre and Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Recent poetry and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry 2015, Poem-a-day, Boston Review, and Poetry. Levin is a grateful recipient of honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as the Rona Jaffe, Whiting and Guggenheim Foundations. She serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis.

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