and chopped off the snake’s head,

which didn’t change the body’s song.

When I write my name

I hold the cool, scaled body

of the snake. Set it writhing

on the page—N, it sings.

Beneath the patterns burnishing

the rattlesnake’s back, its pale belly

glows—page, a place of hunger.

Some days the N is silent

without its head. It’s the Hnnnh

of the scribe’s sword I hear

written in my ear.

I have another name—

I have a rattlesnake name.

When you say my name, you mean, The rattlesnake

is sitting there, watching, waiting, for her.

I am also her.

My Elder says, You are like that rattlesnake.

She is quiet, quiet. Then she strikes, and it’s too late.

You can rewrite but not unwrite.

The rattlesnake. I. Are ampersand.

A coil, almost.

We, ligature.

When a snake swallows its prey,

a row of inner teeth help walk the jaw

over the prey’s body—walking like reading.

Walking over a word with the teeth of our mind.

To write is to be eaten. To read, to be full.

The rattlesnake moves like sepia ink.

The white muscle of the page is what makes these dark ribs walk.

The dimmed bone line is still.

Somewhere deep—the rattle of energy, the hibernaculum.

I watched a rattlesnake swim across the Colorado River,

down near the Devil’s Elbow, where the sea monster,

whose name I cannot tell you, turned the mountain to sand—

created a 90-degree bend in the course of the blue-green water.

I dream of snakes who want to speak to me.

I cover my ears, I run.

I jumped in the bed of a red pickup truck.

The snake stood up on its tail, human.

It spoke with its black tongue like a flick

of black hair in the wind.

It spoke to me with that tongue,

making all those black knots in the air.

The alphabet of my love’s hand in the dark,

a gesture I can read. A desire-text.

She enters me—I am her scriptorium.

My Tío Facundo was from Zacatecas,

and skinned a rattlesnake in our backyard.

Fried it in el disco. He gave me the rattle

tied on a cord I wore around my neck.

Until my Mojave great grandmother saw it,

said, Take it off. I asked, Why? She said,

Would you wear my foot around your neck?

I said, You don’t have feet. She said, Take it off.

She said, We don’t eat snakes. They are our sisters.