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, October 18, 2012

La fuga de Julián (calavera Julian Assange)


Andaba Julián fugándose—
el fundador de las fugas—
a ver si hallaba refugio
de soldados y patrullas.
Y es que fue él que hizo la wiki,
sea verdad o farfulla,
el sitio de los secretos,
la wiki que todo ilustra.
De Australia salió el gran hacker,
país de las cacatúas,
con el rabo entre las piernas
y haciéndose de las suyas.
Mas pronto se vio querido,
hasta en la lista “se busca,”
metido en muchos problemas,
mentado en bandos y bulas.
Entre suecos y británicos
y bajo la misma luna,
de los Estados Unidos
temía las leyes justas.

Cuando de repente escoge
de las embajadas, una:
la del Ecuador, sorpresa
entre las tantas y muchas.
Dieron asilo político.
Las naciones, iracundas,
tramaron complots y atajos
para esta maniobra inmunda.
Pero dio el fin de la historia
la mera mera Huesuda.
Vino por Julián directo.
No contaban con su astucia,
pues Assange merendaba—
de todo un poco le gusta—
comida ecuatoriana, y ¡zas!
se ahoga con un pan de yuca.
Así fue que el fundador
del sitio de muchas fugas,
fugándose del destino,
no encontró, pues, fuga alguna.


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Eat Your Colors

Sounds like fun!
Sounds like good pink fun.
A red fruit, orange, a yellow,
green, purple, even a white counts.
White: the only color the milk is not 
when invaded by bathing spheres of sugar cereal.
But surely that's not what's meant
by the folks who designed the food
pyramid.

All the better.

You tell me, "Eat your colors,"
and I feel
voracious.
You tell me, "You are what you eat."
Well.
Then sixty-four Crayolas are a
meager stack of colories.
I want, I need, to think, to eat
outside that box.

Give me maracujá! I love passionshout juice.
Where is my tropically impossible frosted açai?
I want to absorb, to imbibe
every blast drop of
sherbet streak from the sunscoop as it
oranges and
oozes
stickily
over the horizon's countertop.

I lick and sip the piquant triptych
of red, white, and green picante
in an unrestrained assalsa
on extreme health.
I know a brown enormously lush, 
moister than the tears that muddle it,
the bottom-line G resonant chocolate 
swirl of my daughter's flashpan eyes.
As much green as broccoli 
I could hold easily but I'd rather
burst
with the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it jade phosphorescence
of tomatillos in the blender.

Are you hungry yet?
Are you hungry now?
You need to come with me,
to color hunt.
There's always a shade in season
and I know where to ambush
fair-trade freesia, organic orchids, and bulk bold beautiful bounteous bougainvillea.

So wet your palate and whet your palette.
We'll be a feast for the eyes
cream.