Bruce Dean Willis

is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at The University of Tulsa. His research and publications focus on diverse aspects of poetry and performance, and expressions of Indigenous and African cultures, in Latin American literature, particularly Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

TIME FOR CHOCOLATE is available for purchase through One Act Play Depot! A brief description:

An intoxicating evening of music, poetry, and chocolate... in pre-conquest Mexico!
Based on a fifteenth-century dialogue among nobles schooled in rhetoric and philosophy, the play pits father against son in a war of words over the power and beauty of artistic expression.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Breath, Not Blood

Sacrificed Sun slides across the sky.
Slowly a steep arc he circumscribes.
Breathe, don't bleed; breath, not blood; live, don't die.


Blood he demands for this trail to lead?
No. It was wind blew him forcefully.
Breath, not blood; live, don't die; breathe, don't bleed.


Wind creates movement; it makes and does.
Motion and change come from mouth and tongue.
Live, don't die; breathe, don't bleed; breath, not blood.

(Based on an alternate Nahua version of the birth-of-the-sun myth, in which the newly created sun's refusal to move is remedied by the wind--Quetzalcóatl as Ehécatl--rather than by the sun's demand for the other gods to sacrifice themselves as he had done.)
Posted by © Bruce Dean Willis at 11:59 AM
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