Tommy Archuleta

four poems

Remedio: Recuperación

Once the soul has been recaptured, offer up three White Fires in thanks. Give the patient hot tea to drink composed of chamomile, linden, and passion flowers. Prayers of thanks may now be said with the family along with the burning of red cedar shavings. Make a small bundle of all remaining herbs used for the recapture. Instruct the patient to carry the bundle for six days and nights. On the morning of the seventh day, instruct the patient to bury the bundle in the family field or garden.   

∞

Tell me again about
the saint they named me after 

About how she floated
when she prayed  

and how you can’t be
alive and a saint at the same time      

You just can’t

You have to be dead first 

∞

Tiny screams and wingbeats
almost always now only

much louder when I do this    

Don’t tell me it’s the moth
whose wings we tore off

after what happened to
you happened for the last

time in the coatroom on
the last day of catechism

∞

The time she poured holy
water down the wellshaft
and burned all those herbs at sundown

We’ll never know what tongue
she sang in that day or

Watch what you say whatever
you do when around
the dying because hearing
not falling is the last sense to go

and other warnings

Tommy Archuleta is a mental health counselor and substance abuse counselor for the New Mexico Corrections Department. Most recently his work has appeared in the New England Review, Laurel Review, Lily Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Guesthouse, and the Poem-a-Day series sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. His debut publication, Susto, a book-length poem, is slated for release March 2023 through the Center for Literary Publishing as a Mountain/West Poetry Series title. He lives and writes on the Cochiti Reservation.