Untouched Hearts

Cortez and Malinche

Imagine the capitol on fire As incense for their bedroom, his men Grinning through their beards, reading the sway in her Body language, understanding the Mayan Girl who spoke Spanish, mouthed his ultimatums To the Aztecs, and had other talents.

So history’s promiscuous rumor claims For Mexico’s Eve, betrayer of Montezuma, Who threshed men’s chests like maize, bought her as a slave, And that Jesus made Cortez of hollow tin, But she let him mount her like the tame horse On which he sacrificed thousands to their fields, Colonize her with mariachi And Club Med Cancun. But as night fell On the dying, the fierce run amuck, grunts Mingling with jungle sounds, his mercenaries Never saw her coming, an army Of one dressed like a calla lily.

      They stood Aside forgotten while she conceived plans, gave Herself a past. Imagine her prying boots, Paring armor, owning the bloody Untouched heart within its pale body.

Mata Hari

When she meets the man she’ll marry she swanks Right by him in the street, his heart quick, lying, Insisting all’s lost. She must hear it, loud, As her heels turn to find she’s being followed, A moll, a mole, Rubens’s Delilah In a London Fog coat. She’s made of gas light, The cigarette ash at her feet, and when she smiles It’s pure bribe, thanks to her eyes, so striking Her last admirers will demand a blindfold Before they raise their rifles. None of this Is true, of course—only that he’s met his match As men—if they’re lucky—sometimes do. She’s a failed schoolteacher, a gangly duck Whose small town brooks no dream but escape, If only to a museum with her real name Waiting for a blind date. Anyone can see Just standing there she’s dancing, the rest Flimsy cover, the avant-garde aesthetics And Hindu gods, all those silly officers, The war another floating ecdysiast’s veil. Every woman’s a spy in the enemy’s camp, Instead of wilting at dawn, full of holes Like the evidence, a haggard waitress, A punched-out mill-hand smeared by rain. He’s met her Or someone like her, someone he’s talked to, Laughed with, even slept with, but never thought of Like this until now, a femme fatale, Not deadly, fateful, the one who lures him Into the dark remainder of his days.