Tag: New Mexico

The Cat that Wears the Night Sky for Skin: Charles Bowden and the Northern Jaguar

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The Cat that Wears the Night Sky for Skin:
Charles Bowden and the Northern Jaguar

By John Macker

I’ve never seen a northern jaguar in the flesh, across from me or crossing the border or anywhere else, but then, I’ve never witnessed the birth of the blues or border author Chuck Bowden’s feral ghost. But I believe in them both. Just as I believe in the hot dry ground that sings under its breath for rain; that fantasizes with all of its stoic forbearance: one day it’ll ride the storm out once again.

It still gathers itself at the horizon for the redundant miracles of twilight. The cooling, the operatic softening. Perhaps, for the jaguar’s silent tracks as well: south of the border but close, so close, slowed on its journey by drought, or human predation, the wall. Maybe a sordid combination of all three.

The Mayans believed if you spread out the skin of the jaguar, you’d see a map of the celestial heavens.

In a perfect world, their range would include the American Southwest all the way down into Argentina as it did a thousand years ago. They’re considered endangered in Mexico and in the U.S. if they ever make it that far north. There are rumors. Some legitimate sightings over the years. In northern Mexico, in the Sierra Madre Occidental, his home territory, the Northern Jaguar Reserve⸺ the wildest, most isolated place, where between 8 and 20 of them roam, mate, raise their young and survive⸺ is located about 125 miles south of the U.S./Mexico border and is a protected space. It is 56,000 remote acres of canyons, perennial streams, sheer cliffs, jagged mountains and forests. It is managed by the non-profit Northern Jaguar Project, headquartered in Tucson.

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John Macker: “Abundance “

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Abundance     
                 – For Stewart Warren

An 80 year old woman in New Mexico
does tai chi in the dog park
in an abundance of presence
shares the rhythms of her age
gathers in and then releases the
shiftless summer air.     
In Iceland activists hold a funeral for a famous
glacier, on the permanent plaque they 
placed, in English and Icelandic, 
is written to the children:

Only you know if we did it.

In Auden’s memorial poem to Yeats
he wrote: Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Out the window a police car siren’s
pulsating shriek cleaves the morning
into two organic halves, one an act of faith
the other, not so much. We were instructed
by the nuns to say a prayer or cross
ourselves every time we heard one 
until the danger became
innocent whispered echo.

As if nobody had been hurt.

Ireland will plant 400 million trees in the
next 20 years to combat climate change.
So many more will recognize El Degűello
when they hear it than those who’ve
memorized “The Second Coming”. 
A poet friend in New Mexico 
in his last days of hospice
always traveled his own rivers
now they change course, fill him
with their own abundance, tell him
we have all the time in the world.

The purple morning uplifted cosmos petals
a day after rain and the land which has withstood
the emancipation of all these latest hells

never stops singing.

 

About the Author: John Macker’s latest books are Atlas of Wolves (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and The Blues Drink Your Dreams Away: Selected Poems 1983-2018 (Stubborn Mule Press, 2018 and a finalist for a New Mexico/Arizona Book Award.) Macker has lived in Northern New Mexico for 24 years.

 

More By John Macker:

Last Riff For Chet

 

Image Credit: William Henry Jackson “Embudo, New Mexico” (1882) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

“Remainders” By Marc Frazier

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Remainders

Aunt Bertha’s thick ankles tucked in orthopedic shoes.
She stirs water into flour for chicken gravy paste.

The soon-to-be-closed eyes of my father
stare at the dog planter on the window ledge.

Mother’s hands run fabric under the jumpy needle,
the machine’s drone luring me to love.

The voice of great-uncle John’s deep bass
volleys with Esther’s small, squeaky refrains.

Nicks on Sergio’s perfect face
held like a calla between my flowering palms.

The smell of Sunday’s roast with onions
potatoes and carrots waft through register vents.

Grandfather’s sad, wrinkled red face
dozes alone in the paneled TV room.

David of the Espanola Valley places his hand over mine
as I look above the table at New Mexican stars.

I cannot recall her last smile here beside the unplugged
body as the doctor says, “She’s passed.”

 

About the Author: Marc Frazier has widely published poetry in journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Good Men Project, f(r)iction, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plainsongs, and Poet Lore. Marc is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a “best of the net.” His book The Way Here and his two chapbooks are available on Amazon as well as his second full-length collection Each Thing Touches. Willingly, his third poetry book, will be published by Adelaide Books New York in 2019. His website is http://www.marcfrazier.org.

 

More by Marc Frazier: 

Sent My Way

 

Image Credit: Russell Lee “Removing jars of canned fruit from pressure cooker. Chamisal, New Mexico” (1940) Library of Congress