yellow. i don’t know why i need to tell you that / but i do. it was yellow and it was the color / of understanding my mortality.
My world cracked open in fourth grade when we learned our planets. In college, when my chemistry professor said, “Sometimes I wish I had studied astronomy instead of chemistry,” my universe expanded again. Moments like these are precious. The poems in Mary Peelen’s Quantum Heresies offer a similar shattering-of-the known-world effect.
I’d rather be a Corn Goddess on a Pueblo church’s walls, / sly insertion into a conqueror’s faith
Mosaic of the Dark is drenched in metaphor, mystery, and prayer. Dordal, in her acquired wisdom, has produced a book of poetry that transcends a woman’s story to become a spiritual awakening.
European colonization comes in the shape of a hierarchical, patriarchal triangle. “There’s no way to decolonize,” she continues, “without that spiritual understanding, without getting back into the spiritual circle.”
I carry the cross down the hill / while my brothers cackle and scourge / me until I tire
