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.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

The shape of your palm

There is no geography
like the shape of a palm,
like the particular map of what is a palm,
to convey to the practiced soothsayer
the angle of the thumb's rays
the direction of the prevailing fingers
the lifelines of high tide flush,
each jointed frond opposing,
thirsty for life, 
splayed to best caress the light
even as the winds spin their prints and whorls 
and something like the bark of a tree 
grows rough
and grows
 hewn.

There is no cartography
like the shadow of a palm,
when it gestures, when it dances
in the splashed moon,
in the heaving tide sucked and spit,
in the celestial hand
to which it clings, it 
cleaves,
for dear
life. 

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