Read Online When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz - Free Book Online Page B

assholes.
(Seven darts hit him at once, causing him to wince.)
But,
the lion continued,
the eyes…you can’t beat those salty, olivelike eyes.
An ear dangled like a yo-yo from his goatee as he shook his massive rock-star hair and stumbled off toward a shallow cave at the back of his cage, dragging his tail behind him like a medieval flail. All seven darts jangled and clicked from his flanks like a tambourine made of pink aloe flowers. The Zoo Delta Force Team followed behind him, stepping in the thick tracks his heavy tail had made. The crowd, now hiding out like two separate groups of bandits, was wary of the animals they found themselves near at that particular moment: the gaping gobs of the electric koi beneath the surface of the flotsamed pond, opening and closing their lips in a song shaped like skulls, and the agile maws of the boa constrictors and pythons, unhinging and resetting their jaws like basement doors. But I believed the lion and rang my bowl against the cage to let them know.

About the Author

    Natalie Diaz grew up in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, she completed an MFA in poetry and fiction from Old Dominion University in 2007. She currently lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs a language revitalization program at Fort Mojave, her home reservation. There she works with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language.

Acknowledgments

    Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors of the books and periodicals in which these poems first appeared: “Why I Don’t Mention Flowers When Conversations with My Brother Reach Uncomfortable Silences” in
Best New Poets 2007
and
The Southeast Review;
“How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs,” “The Gospel of Guy No-Horse,” “The Last Mojave Indian Barbie,” “Reservation Mary,” and “Tortilla Smoke: a Genesis” in
Black Renaissance Noire;
“Lorca’s Red Dresses” in
Cider Press Review;
“Apotheosis of Kiss” in
Crab Orchard Review;
“Dome Riddle,” “Reservation Grass,” and “Self Portrait as a Chimera” in
Drunken Boat;
“As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs,” “Downhill Triolets,” “I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed, the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table,” “Mariposa Nocturna,” “Soirée Fantastique,” “Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love,” and “When the Beloved Asks, ‘What Would You Do If You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?’” in
Narrative;
“My Brother At 3 a.m.,” “No More Cake Here,” “The Elephants,” and “When My Brother Was an Aztec” in
Nimrod International Journal;
“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” in
North American Review;
“Hand-Me-Down Halloween,” “I Watch Her Eat the Apple,” “If Eve Side-Stealer and Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World,” and “Métis,” now titled “The Red Blues,”in
Prairie Schooner;
“Black Magic Brother” and “Why I Hate Raisins” in
Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas;
“The Wild Life Zoo” in
Winning Writers.

    Thank you to Khadijah Queen, Lee Quinby, and the Courting Risk Reading Series; Carol Spaulding-Kruse, Jennifer Perrine, and the Drake University Writers and Critics Series; Rosemary Catacalos, Anisa Onofre, and Gemini Ink; Idyllwild Arts Academy; Fran Ringold and the
Nimrod
staff; and the Old Dominion Creative Writing Department for providing opportunities that were important to developing this manuscript.

    Thank you to Michael Wiegers and Copper Canyon Press for the opportunity to publish my