I am standing outside
in Minnesota
ghost wind recalling
names in winter mist
The road smells
of dogs two days dead
White photographers talk in
the house of mainstream
media
I can’ t articulate
the agony of Eagle Singer’ s
children to them.
All the old photographs, hidden like buried
Treasure. Broken prayer sticks under my dreams
And my worn mattress. Each one like a postcard sent back
Home; wonders only seen in slick travel magazines.
Boxed up under my bed, colored souls on Kodak paper —
I can still see Grandma’ s smile next to her resting sheep dog.
Like a blue lightning strike over the northern sky,
Over two black houses, I pull the first leaf out, at random.
I lift my body one leg then another over the cold curve of
the claw-foot tub
Like a walking stick with a colossal cocoon attached
A beast and a mutant I am this
Hooked on the steam of hot water I
Negotiate stretched skin a sore spine the splitting of imminent birth
What do you want
Mammoth a domemoon stomach
Carved by spidery trails former settlement
You in there baby think you’ re ready for this
My grandmother Eliza
was the family surgeon.
Her scalpel made from a pocketknife
she kept in a couple of pinches of snoose.
She saved my life by puncturing
my festering neck twice with her knife.
She saved my brother’ s life twice
when his arm turned bad.
The second time she saved him
was when his shoulder turned bad.
She always made sure
she didn’ t cut an artery.
She would feel around for days
finding the right spot to cut.
When a doctor found out
she saved my brother’ s life
Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah
Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah
Tsay ohi taa geh wo gi wa naa povi sah
pin povi
pin povi do mu u da kun
ka nee na nun dun naa da si tah.
On top of Black Mesa there are flowers
On top of Black Mesa there are flowers
dew on yellow flowers
mountain flowers I see
so far away that it makes me cry.
Question: Can you tell us about what he is wearing?
Well, the hooves represent the deer’ s hooves,
the red scarf represents the flowers from which he ate,
the shawl is for skin.
The cocoons make the sound of the deer walking on leaves and grass.
Listen.
Question: What is that he is beating on?
It’ s a gourd drum. The drum represents the heartbeat of the deer.
Listen.
When the drum beats, it brings the deer to life.
We believe the water the drum sits in is holy. It is life.
Go ahead, touch it.
She always got mad at him
every time he came home in the middle of the morning
with his pant legs wet.
She knew he had fallen in the ditch again.
His legs were not strong enough to be straddling ditches.
He was too old to be walking over temporary dikes.
She wished he didn’ t do that, but sometimes he had to.
She sometimes imagined him falling over backward in one of the irrigation ditches,
his head hitting hard cement,
his body slowly sinking into the water.
Water that was only three feet deep.
I.
i saved my energy as i read,
like managing held-breath underwater
so i could extend my survey
and not miss anything great
I-gv-yi-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-sgo-hni-ho-’ i/
FIRST CHEROKEE LESSON: MOURNING
Find a flint blade
Use your teeth as a whetstone
Cut your hair
Talk to shadows and crows
Cry your red throat raw
Learn to translate the words you miss most:
dust love poetry
