Island of the Dolls

There’s an island along the canals of Xochimilco,
where rain falls in rapid transit between two
worlds.

The trees are beasts, fresh from risen waters, an
unworldly kind of physician that houses spirits
who walk the land with invisible swift feet.

Solace fills the cold shadows behind the scars of
a dead wind where slashes of the past, flow,
whistling demonic tunes.

Bitter roots say nothing as they exhale in the
continual twilight, sensible not to wake the souls
found rejected inside the hanging tree dolls.

Vanishing against the pillar of bark is a young
girl in white gown. Her skin’s original pallor
has been lost to the bloodness of blue

where silver and alabaster flesh falls in pieces
among kerosene lamps that burn with triangular
eminence.

Purple iridescences slick the surface ripples of the
canal as gondolas and ghosts folly together
in a chromium cross of tourists and the departed.

If you listen, you can hear Don Julián Santana Barrera
speak from within your soul about the calmness
of the night and the hands that stroke

the moonlight playing catch with the perishes of
time. There’s an old witch that roams inside the
stanzas of this poem,

one that longs to find her way out of the earth’s
rondure to the grandeur of these parts where a
small child and an old caretaker

reign indulgently and freely past the glitter
of waters and the errors of significant moments,
without articulation, without a sense of place.

Theresa likes to write about matters of self-inflection and personal experiences. She likes to write about matters of an out-of body, out-of-mind state, as well as subjects of an idyllic, pagan nature and the occult. Theresa writes horror, as well as concrete gritty and realistic dramas. Theresa is said to be witch and a poet. (within the horror writing community).

Find more by Theresa C. Gaynord in the Author Index.

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