A Conversation of Spiritual Dimension
Lisbeth Coiman Interviews Diosa Xochiquezatlcóatl
on Conversations With the Dead
When I learned Chicana poet Diosa Xochiquezatlcóatl was preparing to release a bilingual poetry collection titled Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations With the Dead, I immediately took an interest in what she had to say about death.
The poetry resulting from grief can also be dotted with deep reflections on the human condition. However, grief is not the only reason to write about death. Writers like the Chicana poet Diosa Xochiquezatlcóatl approach life from a Spiritist belief that those existing in another dimension can affect health, relationships, luck, and almost every aspect of life. Growing up in rural Venezuela in the '60s, I saw my share of spiritist practices. Unlike Diosa, I never embraced them.
Like a businesswoman, Chicana poet Diosa Xochiquezatlcóatl arrives early at our interview over coffee and pastry at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. Under the shade of a large patio umbrella, objects are neatly arranged in front of her: a notebook, a pen, her coffee, and a gift bag. She is ready. I am intimidated.
It’s a hot Sunday morning. We are still glowing with the joy of sharing ideas, tips, and spending the previous day with our sisters, fellow writers of Women Who Submit. We are joyful in the spirit of cooperation and mutual support. We are here to talk about Diosa’s upcoming bilingual poetry collection, Conversaciones con los difuntos/ Conversations With The Dead, to be released for Día de Los Muertos, 2024 by Editorial Desierto Mayor, out of Sonora, Mexico.
Naturally, our conversation runs smoothly in Spanish.
LC: An English friend of mine once told me that Latin-American literature is a cemetery. We have Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo, and Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de locura, amor y muerte, or Bolaño’s 2666 trilogy for instance, whose second book is a graveyard, each paragraph, a different tomb. What inspired you to choose death as the central theme of this collection?
DX: “Las experiencias vividas,” she answers immediately. “To break the barrier. Everything in our life is compartmentalized. Society determines that we can’t exist in two worlds. I think we exist in several dimensions. I want to help others overcome the fear of death, of discovering other dimensions. People think that there is only evil in the other world. That’s not true. There are good forces from the other side that approach us to counsel, to warn us of danger, or to help us make wise decisions, or to guide our path, even to lift us when we are in a depressive mood.
It's the same role traditional religion attaches to Jesus or god, any other spiritual entity, animal or inanimate objects, like a rock, or the aura. In indigenous traditions, the abuelos are the moon, the rocks, the fire, our ancestors. They are not evil.”
LC: In the collection, the dead can shift the course of action. For instance, “The Woman in the Closet” is the husband’s hidden skeleton. She changes closets to be accepted into the family altar. In another opportunity, a ghost suitor climbs in the bed of their crush. In “La Huesuda,” the jealous bony ghost tries to steal the speaker’s lover. Also, dying is a state of mind: dying of laughter, “The Mask,” for instance. How has death impacted your life? How has death shifted the course of your life?
DX: “In many opportunities. The first death that truly affected me was the passing of my primo, El Chino. That was my term of endearment for my beloved cousin. We grew up together, inseparables. Éramos uña y mugre. My cousin was Mexican Japanese, born with narrow eyes. That’s why we called him chino. As a young girl, I spent all my summers in Mexicali playing with him. His sister was my own sister’s playmate. So we were like a little gang of four, but in pairs, el chino and I were one pair, and our sisters the other pair. I later married a Mexican Chinese, and my son was also born with narrow eyes. I call him Chino II. When my cousin passed away from Type II Diabetes at the age of 32, my own son was only five years old. I stopped going to Mexicali altogether. I had lost my best friend. It was a hard blow. His sister, Martha, somehow filled the space in my heart that belonged to him.
But my spiritual journey started several years later when my abuela died in 2010. Then I developed spasmodic dysphonia— a medical condition in which the muscles that produce the human voice suffer from frequent spasms. I started looking into the ethers, a sidereal space that includes other dimensions. I wanted to stay in touch with El Chino and my abuela.
LC: Let’s talk about the poem “Ehecatl & the Ancestors Dance Among the Ethers.” This poem is so Día De Los Muertos that I want to believe you are going to release this collection in time for us to read it during this ether moment between October and November. Also, the poem includes an indigenous language. What language is that?
DX: Yes, Conversations With The Dead will be released in time for Día de Los Muertos. That’s Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica or Aztecs and from Jalisco, where my family is from. That’s the language my ancestors spoke. It’s only natural that if I speak of/to my ancestors, I use their language.
LC: As a Venezuelan, I am always a bit intimidated by the Mexican Dia de Los Muertos. Like you, we visit the cemetery, but we just go to clean the tombs. It’s a day of mourning, not of celebration. The mere idea of leaving a trail of petals for the dead to find their way into this world is scary to me. I don’t want the dead to find me. What do you have to say to someone with that kind of mentality? What do we have to learn from your culture?
DX: Do not fear the unknown, and this is not exclusive to Day of the Dead. The portal is open year-round to communicate and learn. Who better than those who have already gone through to teach us? My paternal grandmother knew how to communicate with the dead. It wasn’t until I started this spiritual journey that I understood the many ways in which she had access to that portal. She was visited often. She was a spiritist. But then my father became a deacon, so he prohibited all those practices in his home. She kept her ways a secret.
So, after the death of my other abuelita, I began to interrogate my paternal grandmother on those visits to learn from her. She told me what I will tell you today. Tell the ancestor visiting you: “If you are not from the light, look somewhere else. You are not welcome here. “I reject all evil!” ”
LC: “I reject all evil! like the line in your last poem, “‘Tis Not Midnight Dreary?”
DX: Exactly. But also in “She Made a Pact With The Devil.” There are evil forces, and not necessarily dead. In my spiritual search, I took a course in autolimpias, to learn to clean myself of evil influences and negative energies. I learned that these forces would leave you alone when you know to stay in the light. Usually, what happens is whatever evil they have sent your way, goes back to them to affect them where they most hurt. What’s crucial is to keep an open mind and to know you are in control of who enters your dimension, to stay in the light.
LC: Again, culture plays a role in the interpretation of poetry. For me cicadas are an April thing. They come out before the rain. I associate their songs with children playing in the common spaces of our neighborhood. It never occurred to me that they could be associated with death. What is the role of the cicadas in this collection? Why did you decide to open with the sound of the cicadas?
DX: The cicadas sing when they are about to die. Also, because there is a Mexican song, one of those heartbreak songs we jokingly call “vein-cutter,” because it is so depressive. It goes something like this, “I want to die singing, like the cicada.” I used to sing all the time, and I was a pretty good singer. Also my lifelong dream was to become a schoolteacher. When I was about to receive my teaching credentials, I had the onset of spasmodic dysphonia and lost my voice. Not only was I not able to teach, but I also couldn’t sing, the one thing that brings me the most joy. I fell into a deep depression.
For my own mental health, I had to start my spiritual journey. I had to find answers to this major shift in my life, how to approach it, how to live with a permanent disability. The cicada’s song at the beginning of the collection marks the beginning of that spiritual path, a path that is never-ending. Something must die for something to be born. I lost my singing voice, but I rediscovered my poetic voice.
LC: What did the dead tell you in these bilingual conversations?
DX: One of the first things the dead told me when I first started asking them questions was, “Remember your lineage. You are from the Sierras of Jalisco.”
During Covid, Chino’s sister, Martha, was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic cancer. She eventually recovered. In the meantime, we lost 12 people, family and friends. My home became the house of the spirits. Like in Allende’s book, the dead came and went at will. But by then, I had the right mindset for the experience. I was ready to interact with them, receive their messages, their warnings, and chat with them. After all, time is all we had during the pandemic. So I started documenting these conversations, and it turned into this book, Conversations With The Dead.
My cousin’s cancer has come back. So, the possibility of her death is always haunting me. But the dead have already spoken to me; they’ve told me to “Stay in the light.”
LC: Thank you for talking to me. It has been a real pleasure and a conversation of spiritual dimensions. Now, I also want to search for the light.
Diosa Xochiquezatlcóatl, or Diosa X for short, is a multilingual and multidimensional spoken word artist, workshop facilitator, and international poetisa. She is a seasoned language arts educator with a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Cross-Cultural Teaching. This Pushcart and Best in Fiction nominee was selected Regional 2nd Runner Up in Inlandia’s Hillary Gravendyke’s Poetry Prize in 2023 for her poetry collection titled, When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down: An A to Z Poetry Collection About Loss. She was also selected as a finalist for Somos en escrito’s Best Raza Short Story Award in 2023 for her piece titled “The Weight of the Scales.” Diosa X has been published in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines in the U.S. and in Mexico and is the author of six poetry collections: A Church of My Own (2021), Hechizera: Sus Sultry Spells (Editorial Raíces, 2022), West of the Santa Ana and Other Sacred Places (Riot of Roses Publishing, 2023), Felices Fiestas (Read or Green Books, 2023), Conversations with the Dead / Conversaciones con los difuntos (Editorial Desierto Mayor, 2024), and When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down: An A to Z Poetry Collection About Loss (Hawkeye Publishing, 2024). To learn more about Diosa Xochiquezatlcóatl's work, feel free to visit www.diosax.net.