Postcolonial Love Poem

The poem’s title emphasizes two key aspects of the poem: postcolonialism and love. The term postcolonial refers to the effects and legacy of colonization and imperialization on the lands and peoples who were colonized. The term is also used to describe projects that seek to reclaim and rethink history to highlight the colonized peoples’ culture and agency. The poem’s speaker describes her resilience in the face of the ongoing trauma and violence she experiences as an Indigenous woman. Yet this idea is contrasted with love. Her queer relationship with another woman transforms these wounds into something beautiful.

The poem describes the literal and metaphorical wars the speaker and her people have experienced and are still experiencing. The poem begins with the speaker describing the healing principles of bloodstones. These stones “can cure a snakebite, / can stop the bleeding” (Line 1). This snake could be the animal, but it could also symbolize the white colonizers that duplicitously betrayed Indigenous people. The bloodstone’s healing power also comes from its connection to her culture that she has “been taught” (Line 1) about. She emphasizes that the effects are ongoing, that even though “most people forgot this / when the war ended” (Lines 2-3), the wounds still need to be healed.

Rather than specifying which war she is describing, the speaker instead emphasizes the ambiguity to underscore the specific name does not matter as these battles are ongoing from “millennia ago and onward” (Line 5). By using the collective “we” (Line 4), the speaker emphasizes the generational trauma passed on, suggesting that the wound the speaker thinks to treat with bloodstones may be an emotional and mental wound.

The speaker was “started” (Line 6) by wars. As an Indigenous woman, she has been born into a culture that has needed to fight to exist. The speaker reflects on the personal battles she has both “lost and won” (Line 5), suggesting that the cultural battles influence her individual life. These battles have left “ever-blooming wounds” ( Line 7). These wounds are described as always reopening as it is difficult for them to heal. Yet the word “blooming” suggests that the speaker is growing from these wounds, as the rest of the poem makes extensive use of flower imagery.

The speaker’s declaration that she “was built by wage” (Line 8) plays on the multiple meanings to reflect the complexity of her existence. On one hand, she was created by the wars being waged against her people. Yet her people’s existence and ability to carry on is also a type of waging. The speaker reinforces this possible reading when she describes how she “wage[s] love” (Line 8). But this love itself is something “worse” (Line 8) because her lover is a white woman, a part of those who have colonized her people.

The speaker positions their relationship as a “campaign” (Line 9) in the continuation of this war. Her lover’s “pale skin” is a “cannon flash” (Line 10). Despite the violence represented by her partner’s skin, the speaker instead “deliver[s]” (Line 12) her lover. Even if this woman embodies violence and hate, the speaker loves her. She uses the setting of the desert to compare her relationship with her lover to water and suggest her need for the other woman. Even if white people at large are a “country of drought” (Line 14) without love, the speaker “learned to Drink” (Line 14) from this white woman.

The speaker highlights the paradox of their relationship through contrast. They “pleasure to hurt” (Line 13). Their physical intimacy “leave[s] marks / the size of stones” (Lines 13-14). These marks, though made in moments of passion and love, recall the wounds of battle. While their cultures, represented by their bodies, have been at war, these new marks reflect their loving union.

The speaker compares these marks to cabochon gems. These gemstones have been shaped and polished, but not faceted. This description suggests that the marks are not cut and shaped to reflect cultural standards. Instead, they are treasured and rubbed smooth. Instead of being created by hands, which have often enacted violence against the speaker, they are created by mouth. The reciprocity of these acts is emphasized in her description that she is both “your lapidary” and “your lapidary wheel” (Line 17). A lapidary is both the person polishing the stone and the study of stone polishing. The speaker here is the actor, polishing her lover. But when she is the wheel, she is the tool for her lover to polish her. The bruise-like coloring of the rock becomes a feature of the jasper stone.

The flower seeds may seem to “sleep like geodes” (Line 22), but they are alive and waiting to blossom. The exterior of a geode is unremarkable, but the interior is filled with shimmering gemstones. This reference suggests that the trauma the speaker experienced has not damaged the beauty inside her. The flood waters coming to the desert open the seeds. Her relationship has brought love back into her experiences. This water “opens them with memory” (Line 24), emphasizing the positive historical and cultural traditions that she can draw upon. The speaker remembers how her people’s “god whispered / into their ribs: Wake up and ache for your life” (Lines 25-26). This desire for life contrasts with the war and death she experiences at the hands of colonialism.

The speaker describes how her lover has added value to her life, as where her lover has touched her “are diamonds / on my shoulders, down my back, thighs” (Lines 27-28). Yet these valuable jewels are created through extreme pressure, further underscoring the speaker’s experiences.

These thoughts, as the dash suggests, are interrupted. The speaker states, “I am your culebra” (Line 29). Culebra, the Spanish word for snake, holds a multitude of contradictory images, further extending the contrasting ideas. In a colonialist context, a snake represents death and deception. The speaker suggests that she is responsible for her lover’s downfall. Historically, Indigenous people were treated as dangerous “pests” to be exterminated. But this animal also holds more positive possible meanings. For Aztec culture, which Diaz drew upon in her first collection, a snake represents wisdom and the earth. The snake also has contemporary connections to medicine and healing, as it features on the Staff of Life. The relationship can be healing, especially as the couple has different racial backgrounds. This paradox extends to how she is “in the dirt” (Line 30) for her lover. Her position in the dirt is both a romantic declaration and a description of their cultures’ historical power dynamic.

The speaker describes her lover’s hips as “quartz-light” (Line 31), emphasizing the desirability of her pale and beautiful skin. Yet it is also “dangerous” (Line 31) to the speaker as an Indigenous woman. The speaker then imagines her lover’s hips as “two rose-horned rams ascending a soft desert wash” (Line 32), which is a dry canyon bed in the desert. The arrival of her lover is connected to the arrival of the floods that periodically occur in the desert wash. This water makes it so that “the desert returned suddenly to its ancient sea” (Line 34). The lover rejuvenates the speaker like these floods transform the desert.

The speaker describes the blooming of “wild heliotrope, scorpion weed, [and] / blue phacelia” (Lines 35-36). These wildflowers that bloom after the rain are those traits that grow within the speaker now that she is in a nurturing and loving relationship. But the speaker does re-emphasize the inherent violence of their relationship: The blue flowers “hold purple the way a throat can hold / the shape of any great hand” (Line 37). The trauma the speaker has experienced is still a part of her, though it has been transformed into a thing of beauty.

The phrase “great hand” (Line 37) prompts the speaker to remember how her lover has complimented her hands. The pun on this word shifts the image from a foreboding and large hand to one of flirtatious desirability.

The speaker ends the poem on a realistic note. She is neither hopeful nor despondent when she states that “rain will eventually come, or not” (Line 39). The transformative change she craves for herself and her people is a desire but not a promise. She acknowledges how she and her people must continue. The trauma and violence of war “have never ended and somehow begins again” (Line 41). The genocidal violence and erasure of Indigenous peoples continues.