xetsa-axa / people of light
by Deborah Miranda
For one night we are stars
who have found their constellation;
for a few hours we are mascara
and glitter, sequins and lipstick;
for a moment outside of time,
we sway inside our home place
where the bass beat pounds our skins
like taut hides and we are who
we were always supposed to be:
tonight we are will you? and yes,
and dance with somebody who loves me;
we are a wave of dollar bills held up
like candles. When we walk out that door,
the full moon places a kiss upon our brows
like a tiara and our hearts turn into luminarias,
float up into a black velvet rhinestone realm.
Deborah Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation in California, with Santa Ynez Chumash ancestry. Her hybrid book, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. She is also the author of four poetry collections (Indian Cartography, The Zen of La Llorona, Raised by Humans, and Altar for Broken Things) and co-editor of the Lambda finalist Sovereign Erotics: An Anthology of Two-Spirit Literature. A recovering academic, she lives with her spouse in Eugene, Oregon, at River Song Cohousing on the Willamette River, where she writes, researches, and focuses on building community.
Photo by Jacob Spence on Unsplash