THE HUMMUS WOMAN
Inspired by Erica Jong
They search for the hummus woman,
born from the chickpea of childhood,
a game of hands upon the ground,
a mother of vanished joy.
I am the hummus woman,
lying, growing at the edge of thickness,
water and oil trembling,
multiplying stars through energy.
They wound the hummus woman,
stretching her sesame veins
through the universe, dissatisfied
with her detachment, her kindness.
They kill the hummus woman,
heart removed, churned in yogurt,
a cumin seed,
mind slow-cooked in garlic cloves,
her fate,
with atoms of salt and lemon they mend her:
still too sweet,
unfit to be consumed.
They pour her into the trash,
her decomposition begins again:
humus of butterfly and algae,
fertile and barren,
the universe owes her,
a check to the bearer,
loss of body,
trade of wings,
heavier, smaller.
She thinks she flies,
and that all is reborn with her,
but love remains cursed,
accused on the witness stand.
She thinks she flies,
but only flutters and crashes,
the illusion of boundless birth
in the same filth of the world.
She thinks she flies,
and it’s enough,
misguided,
insufficient,
loved,
I have, I lose,
I am and I am not,
I shrink if I grow,
I dream and I wake,
thirsty if I drink,
I read and know less,
I feel if I don’t think,
and when I think, I feel so much.
I move without the wind
and with the wind, I stay still.
I am the book
and ashamed
not to know it.
I am the stone
and ashamed
of its softness.
I am light
and ashamed
of the whiteness
of its shadow.
And I keep becoming
this and that,
the line and wheel of time,
the battle and the war,
and all the peace
that does not exist
is never enough for me.
© Maria Luisa Arenzana Magaña
