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.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Exu in the Threshold

With inspiration from the traditional way of opening candomblé ceremonies, I'm starting Macaw with a poem about Exu, trickster orixá of communications, crossroads, and possibilities, and distributor of the axé life force.


thrEXUold

dance

on a dime

spin

on the line

dip skinny

slip on the lip of

the slippery interstices

emerge, axé

the black cock

weathervane

when the wind is southerly

or is it north northwest

spins—heads

twists—tails

a heart a fist

an acorn an arrow

spurting syntheses

neither man nor woman

neither day nor night

neither in nor out

neither black nor white

but rather

everything on the contrary

and everything

in

between

Laroiê!

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