Embroidery at the Hearth of Faith
Poet Natalia Treviño cross-stitches the sacred and the ordinary
Por las tardes le gusta bordar (Midafternoon at her Embroidery), pencil drawing by Los Angeles artist-author J. Michael Walker
POET’S NOTE
In my poetry, I hope to highlight the intersection between the sacred and the ordinary, to uplift the root of spirituality and embrace its wholeness. This is a collection of five poems, which sit in conversation with one another and face the hearth that is at the center of my family’s complicated Catholic faith. The collection began when I encountered a work of art, a pencil drawing by J. Michael Walker called Por las tardes le gusta bordar (Midafternoon at her Embroidery). This work brought to life my grief and loss for grandmother Maria de Socorro, named for the the Virgin Mary, Mary of Mercy. It was as if I were seeing her alive again in her room in Mexico as she is to me spiritually, as my true divine mother meshed together with the divine mother. I sobbed each time I witnessed this portrait. I had to explore this grief—and love—for her, so I began to study La Virgen to discover my grandmother’s unshakable faith in her. This, in turn, awoke my own exploration of faith and inquiry to discover the wholeness that exists between the human and the divine spheres.
I found so much more when I explored the deeper connection between La Virgen de Guadalupe and Coatlicue, the Aztec Mother Goddess. This is the Divine Feminine, the source of life, the Mother of God, the Mother of the Stars, the Sun, the Great Mother. My world exploded, and now I have a lifetime of discovery and material to access for my poetry. This indigenous Madre de las Américas is also the Queen of Mexico, as well as the Queen of Heaven, and these overlapping identities of hers feed an extraordinary, multidisciplinary look at our spiritual ancestry here in this land. Coatlicue was so frightening when she was discovered by 16th-century Spanish colonial priests that they buried her. She was then discovered again in 1790, and reburied. Finally, she has been unearthed permanently, we hope, in the 20th century and can be seen today at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Like the Gospel of Thomas, which reveals so much about Mary Magdalene and dates to about 60 AD, Coatlicue is a text that also spent hundreds of years buried, unseen. What were they so afraid of in these texts? I find this to be exciting, riveting, and revelatory.
“Sorrow #2” is part of a series on the Seven Sorrows Prayer and was published in CONTRA: Texas Poets Speak Out (Flowersong Press, 2020). “Sacred Heart” was published in my first book of poems, Lavando La Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014). “Decolonizing Maria,” “Queen of Mexico,” “Mary, Mother of the Word,” and “Witness” appear in my collection, VirginX (Finishing Line Press, 2018).
SORROW #2
“Arise and take the child and His mother and fly into Egypt . . .
For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy Him”
for it came to pass that his life was a threat to power and that he would be destroyed, for it came to pass that their lives were a threat to power and that their lives also destroyed for it came to pass that black lives and brown lives were such a threat that they’d become prey in the name of law and order set out by the king who was afraid he didn’t look good enough wasn’t smart enough so he [white-out does not work here], not only on the street but every continent, flaming in the fear he’d never be mourned enough, not by his sister or his own sons—the story says the king set out to
all the born boys, the born baby boys, two and younger standing or face down arms up gunless and toothless in the wrong place at the wrong corner and for it came to pass, it came to pass that your amá hid you because the king was shaky at the knees afraid of a turn, una vuelta, revolución and you traveled across the border in the cover of night, your amá bent over hungry and scared and never sola, never la única amá who hid her child in her wrappings under the skin of the black and shimmering sky, and your apá on foot on guard both of them traveling on the word of an angel and a dream, dreamers all of ‘em. This sorrow number two, flight to Egypt, flight from guns, slits, and clips and praying isn’t enough for these sons and daughters but if I am praying this right, it’’s supposed to spill through the criss-cross fencing between the ages, crush the criss-cross hell that is the cages, free the future kings and the future sages
SACRED HEART
Mary Magdalene
wasn’t a prostitute. But it helped explain her
hundreds of years after she lived.
Named scarlet, hidden under desert sands.
Gospel secrets
that she’d been loved best, by Christ—
that she’d calmed apostles,
and best knew his heart.
How drops
of his blood
cooled in the folds
of her hand.
But what is it inside the heart
of a man? a god? or a law?
In medical books that explain the heart,
pages show how blockages persist.
Women kept from vestments
because Christ only chose men.
Entire lifetimes halted by the tartar
of human veins.
And without emphasis, passion, or gore,
passages tell of the unseen:
how a pale gold liquid,
camouflaged by all the red,
soothes spent cells,
nourishing the darkest vessels
Mary’s mouth-kisses buried
in the deserts:
her secret sediments
in perpetual resurrection.
DECOLONIZING MARIA
She has toes.
They often resist Earth’s rock;
her robes formed from a crush
of lapiz lazuli.
The molten Primordial Mother knew
to lock a glint of ocean between her ancient, rugged lips
for her own floating couture,
for painters and poets to understand
what to say about her,
so we could ask, then:
are you a symbol,
a woman, or both?
Are you a good piece of what is woman
or all the pieces that make women?
Constructed?
Constructor?
“Idol, Teoyaomiqui [i.e. Coatlicue],” courtyard of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Photo: William Henry Jackson. Source: Gift, State Historical Society of Colorado, 1949; Detroit Publishing Co. photograph collection, Library of Congress
[View annotations that decipher Coatlicue's symbolism here.]
QUEEN OF MEXICO
Don’t think of her as anything too special or far away; think of her like a comadre who wants to pass the time playing loteria, wearing soft white tennis shoes on her tired feet, embroidering the bedspread a few afternoons a week. Think of her as you might your own abuela who can and does go for the capirotada, the cigarettes, the long button down bata midsummer. This is the woman who yes may have given birth to Jesus or a thousand boys named Jesús—this is the woman who disregards the borders, not just the big river or el mero mero mar between those original conquerers and this patria here, but los puentes between the living and not living, between the deities, their children and todos nosotros batallando down here— she appears to the people en el cielo, en las nuves, in the rocks, on los pancekes, at the hillside of Tepeyac in the middle of dead winter, unafraid of the desert snakes or the sting of nopales, —emissary for that Our Father and His/Their Son. She doesn’t mean to make us question their power by popping in and answering prayers like nobody’s business, but she wants to make a point. She’ll wear a necklace of skulls to do it, a belt made of snakes when it was the thing to do, Come in a dress made of stars she gave birth to, and the moon too, to wake us up to ourselves. Wear a crown made of twigs and a blue ball that looks just like Earth, so people could get it once and for all. Doesn’t stop crying though. All heart that woman. Asking, never telling us to re-think it all, to have the courage (to take a rose or two) (to eat a peach or two), and obey, please, our dam, our mother.
MARY MOTHER OF THE WORD
Mary Mother of Sorrows, Mary
Mother of Mercy, Queen
of Heaven, Cause of Our Joy, Our
Lady of Peace, Our
Lady of the Lake, of Lebanon,
Loreto, of Lourdes,
of Nazare, of the Miraculous Medal,
fashioned at her request,
of Perpetual Help,
of Solitude, Snows, and Confidence.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, of Fatima, of Charity,
of the Gate of Dawn, the Immaculate Conception,
Our Lady of Grace, Good
Counsel, Good Help and Good
Health. Virgin of the Rocks of the Pillar, of the Thirty Three
who freed Uruguay. Our Lady, Great Lady, Queen
of Mexico, Virgen de San Juan del Valle
en Tejas, de los Lagos en Mexico,
Virgen Morena. Appearances,
too many to count. Salts
diluted in the Living Wound.
Moisture in the composition
of the Air We Breathe.
These names, Morning Star, self-pollenate,
Mystical Rose, like dandelion seeds, Refuge of Sinners,
that travel balmy currents; Life Giving Spring,
land with feathery precision, Our Lady of Aparecida,
on new ground; Nuestra Señora de la Asunción,
contain the Whole and the Fraction of you, Honduras’
Virgen of Suyapa;
Factors of Multiples of you.
They are you, divided by millions,
multiplied by all of the unnamed
who wait for release
from inside the multitudes of twin
white ladles under our skin,
from petals,
stamen, pistils, anthers, ova,
testes, from all that ever cradled
a seed.
La Primavera (Spring), 1481-82, tempera on wood panel, by Sandro Botticelli. Source: Uffizi Gallery
WITNESS
That we make her a compiled human
is understandable.
Boticelli had Simonetta
Vespucchi—his Venus
for Birth of Venus, every blonde
in the Trials of Moses displayed
in the Sistine Chapel, the girl,
the one whose eyes beg for a kiss
in Temptations of Jesus,
both Flora, the goddess of flowers
for Christ’s sake and the gazing
camera-hungry flower-gatherer in Primavera.
Simonetta was crowned grace,
Madonna Magnificat.
Had himself buried at her
married feet when he died.
How else to imagine
divinity than with the faces we love?
It’s what we do.
Bear the ephemeral.
Worship what is left.
Madonna del Magnificat, 1481-82, tempera on wood panel, by Sandro Botticelli. Source: Uffizi Gallery
Lavando La Dirty Laundry by
Natalia Treviño
Mongrel Empire Press, 2014
“This writer warns us she is a woman like a ‘Mexican electric fence’…”
—Sandra Cisneros
VirginX by Natalia Treviño
Finishing Line Press, 2018
“It is the voice of Aztec and of San Antonio; of the Madonna and the goddess with a necklace of hands…”
–Veronica Golos, author of ROOTWORK
CONTRA: Texas Poets Speak Out,
eds. Rooster Martinez and Chibbi Orduña FlowerSong Press, 2020
CONTRA activates people to register to vote, activates people to go vote, and donates all profits from book sales to MOVE Texas.
