THE TRUTH OF VIKINGS

The music in her head makes her scared
as if Vikings still brandished their blades
from the decks of ships fierce as dragons afloat in an ageless river

The leaves are chill flames
Cold rains obscure the water’s source
Hiding it away like the secret of a woman’s aging body

She is apples and pears
She ripens in her own sweet skin
Only the moon can match the luster of her opalescent belly

Her mouth makes shadows
Her fingers are a doorway and her hair a burning bush
Iconic as a religious artifact still sticky and sweet inside

She is on route to the end of being on the back of a red swan
She is on the way to nothingness made tolerable
by ritual and fire and the howling of inconsolate women

They no longer believe
that love will save them from sorrow
There is no home now they wail there is no safe place

Death tastes like winter flowers
She knows this because
she knows things she is not supposed to know

She stands so close
she can hear warriors telling each other secrets
The truth is that neither love nor death diminishes you

The way to truth is a life suffered
The way to truth is a drunken waltz
She stands so close her howl is lost in the roar of the music inside her head

She is wordless before the fact of Vikings
Rain and a woman’s sluggish heat

Truth is found in a harsh yellow light


About Donna Snyder:
Donna Snyder founded the Tumblewords Project in San Miguel, New Mexico in 1995 and continues to present its weekly creative writing workshops and occasional performance events to the borderlands community. VirgoGray Press published her chapbook I Am South in 2010.  Her work can be seen in Mezcla, Puerto Del Sol, Finger Magazine, BorderSenses, Unadorned Press, and in other magazines.  She has a poem in an anthology called Cantos Al Sixto Sol, which is banned in Arizona.