My Name is Espada

		My Name is Espada Espada: the word for sword in Spain wrought by fire and the hammer's chime, name for the warrior reeling helmut-hooded through the pandemonium of horses in mud, or the face dreaming on a sarcophagus, hands folded across the hilt of stone. Espada: sword in el Caribe, rapier tested sharp across the bellies of indios, steel tongue lapping blood like a mastiff gorged on a runaway slave, god gleaming brighter than the god nailed to the cross, forged at the anvil with chains by the millions tangled and red as the entrails of demons. Espada: baptizing Taíno or Congolese, name they stuttered in the barking language of priests and overseers, slave's finger pressed to the blade with the pulsing revelation that a Spaniard's throat could seep blood like a fingertip, sabers for the uprising smuggled in the hay, slave of the upraised saber beheaded even as the servants and fieldhands murmured he is not dead, he rides a white horse at night, his sword is a torch, the master cannot sleep, there is a dagger under the pillow. Espada: cousin to the machete, peasant cutlass splitting the cane like a peasant's backbone, cousin to the kitchen knife skinning a plátano. Swords at rest, the machetero or cook studied their blisters as if planets to glimpse the hands of their father the horseman, map the hands of their mother the serf. Espada: sword in Puerto Rico, family name of bricklayers who swore their trowels fell as leaves from iron trees; teachers who wrote poems in galloping calligraphy; saintcarvers who whittled a slave's gaze and a conqueror's beard; shoemaker spitting tuberculosis, madwoman dangling a lantern to listen for the cough; gambler in a straw hat inhabited by mathematical angels; preacher who first heard the savior's voice bleeding through the plaster of the jailhouse; dreadlocked sculptor stunned by visions of birds, sprouting wings from his forehead, earthen wings in the fire. So the face dreaming on a sarcophagus, the slave of the saber riding a white horse by night breathe my name, tell me to taste my name: Espada. from A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen