Even the Sotol Believes
If we must discuss logographic systems, let us begin with fish.
And how might one mistake an entrance for a perch?
A movable rod for a desert spoon?
Today’s lesson excludes a poorly rendered door.
Hinges are merely mechanical joints, the origin of which means to hang. Concentrate there.
D is the tenth most frequently used letter in English.
Depicted on rock wall paintings, the sotol has provided food, sandals,
blankets, ropes, tools and spirits for millennia.
Slow cook the roots for three nights, crush, then ferment for seventy-two hours in
champagne yeast. Distill, then age in French oak.
We shall neither open nor close, nor mention those things that do.
Like bivalves. Bottles. Eyes. Shops. Caskets. Books. Mouths. Circuits.
Its flower stalk rises up to fifteen feet. Its leaves are long, thin and barbed.
Surrounded by orange ochre flames and black smoke, the sotol spirit appears.
Dalet will not enter our vocabulary today.
Originally published in Otoliths 41 (October 2013), and posted here in October 2015.
O at the Edges 
One of my all-time favorites! 🙂
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Thanks, Sunshine.
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What a strange, playful poem … I get the sense of having missed half the lecture due to daydreaming! Especially appealing is the list of things you aren’t going to mention. Have seen (admired) the sotol spirit … have not imbibed sotol spirits (none yet offered).
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The story of my school days! Sotol tastes much like tequila.
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I’ll drink these spirits if it turns me into a poet capable of writing poetry like this….well, maybe I’ll just drink and appreciate the poem.
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Ha! Thanks, Jilanne.
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Completely fantastic. Sublime… !!!
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Thank you, Daniel. I like sotols. They’re much more forgiving than yucca or prickly pear, and not nearly as invasive as agave. And their flowering stalks are lovely!
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And don’t the unique booze that they make! 🙂
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Oh, yeah!
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Intricate use of language that’s taking me longer than I care to disclose to fully comprehend. Thank you for the addition of Mexican flowering plants and Semitic abjads to my google search history.
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Thanks for sticking with it, and for your kind words.
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Like a very professorial Edward Lear with an unusual tipple. I love it!
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Ha! I don’t go out of my way to drink sotol, but wouldn’t turn up my nose at the thought of it. 🙂
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