LIVING
NATIONS,
LIVING
WORDS

AN ANTHOLOGY OF FIRST PEOPLES POETRY

COLLECTED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JOY HARJO, 23RD U.S. POET LAUREATE

FOREWORD BY CARLA D. HAYDEN, LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

Foreword

During her inaugural reading as the twenty-third Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, Joy Harjo said, “Every poem has poetry ancestors.” The poet laureateship has had a long line of esteemed ancestors over its eighty-plus-year history. Since 1937, the Library of Congress has appointed such luminaries as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Robert Pinsky. As Joy Harjo performed that evening in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium—reciting her poems, playing the flute and saxophone, and rocking out to her backing musicians—it was easy to imagine that the spirits of these past laureates were cheering her on, alongside the overflow audience who gave her a standing ovation.

The electricity in the air that night is a typical response to Harjo—a poet, author, musician, playwright, mentor, and advocate for social justice. As the first Native poet to serve as poet laureate, Harjo (a member of the Muscogee [Creek] Nation) has focused on showing that Native people and poets are alive and thriving, and have vital and unequivocal roots in this country. This anthology is one manifestation of her signature laureate project, which includes an online map of contemporary Native poets. By clicking on the map, users can immerse themselves in these poets’ worlds: see where each poet lives or feels most rooted, read their poems and biographies, and—best of all—hear their voices and languages as they recite and discuss their poems. This remarkable body of work, titled “Living Nations, Living Words,” forms the foundation of a new online collection in the Library’s American Folklife Center, and is reprinted here as a physical companion to Joy’s digital project.

As Joy said, “Poetry doesn’t just emerge, it emerges from the soul of a community.” There are so many communities to discover and explore at the Library of Congress. I invite you to visit loc.gov to experience Joy’s “Living Nations, Living Words” project, along with other inspiring literary resources and collections such as Poetry 180, Poetry of America, and the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.

—Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress

Introduction

The very first maps were drawn into the earth with stick or stone implements. They told us where we lived, the location of food, water, and danger. Some were star maps of the heavens, histories notched and painted, or symbols of stories that gave directions on how to live. The earliest indigenous maps of North America were not drawn. The placement and orientation of a village, its buildings, and even mound structures were markers that mirrored the meaning of the heavens, or other directional senses. Even a basket could be a map, or a song. We carry maps of destiny in our poems.

One of the earliest existing maps, known as Imago Mundi, is a cuneiform tablet of the Babylonian world estimated to be from the sixth century BCE. The map shows Babylon on the Euphrates River surrounded by other nations. What I appreciate most is the language of the text that accompanies the map. One region is described as “the winged bird ends not his flight”; another is “the light is brighter than that of sunset or stars,” or “where a horned bull lives and attacks the newcomer.”

When I started my term as the twenty-third U.S. poet laureate I immediately began considering a signature project. As the first Native Nations poet laureate, I was aware that indigenous peoples of our country are often invisible or are not seen as human. Or we are known from false images and narratives carried over from the vitriol of New England Puritan Cotton Mather and others who imagined us as demonic heathens not capable of civilized and ordered thought and action. You will rarely find us in the cultural storytelling of America, and we are nearly nonexistent in the American book of poetry. For my project, I conceived the idea of mapping the United States based on the poetry of Native Nations poets. I liked the idea of mapping America by poetry with poets.

This anthology includes the poets and poems featured in the online mapping project. These are representative poets from locations across the country. Each poet chose their poem based on the theme of place and displacement, and with four touchpoints in mind: visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. They also chose where they wished to place themselves—where they currently live, in their homelands, or where they feel most rooted. In the digital project, you can see the map and the poets’ locations, read their poems, and hear them recite and comment on their poems.

Native roots run deep, even when people are relocated, as were many Native Nations in this country. One of the best-known relocation projects is the Trail of Tears, which removed the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw from homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory, which is present-day Oklahoma. Like those in other communities, we travel far from home for work, opportunity, or love.

You will find some of the poets living far from their homelands. Jennifer Foerster lives in San Francisco, California. She claims this city by the ocean as her home. Her mother’s family is from the prominent Perryman family of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation who lived outside of Tulsa. Her family roots go back to Georgia and Alabama. And there are poets who stay close to home, like Henry Real Bird of the Crow Nation, who grew up on his reservation speaking his native language. He started out as a bronc rider, but an injury during his college years began his journey from the demanding physicality of bronc riding to what he has called the “spiritual world” of writing.

There were also other considerations when making the map. When editing or curating any Native Nation project the question always arises: who is indigenous? We have chosen to allow tribal nations to define who is a tribal member. It is not up to us to be the arbitrators.

There are many other Native Nations poets—from more than 573 federally recognized Native Nations and other legitimate state-recognized tribal entities—who deserve to be included. Many of us are established in our communities, known in languages other than English. There are those coming up who are the purl of the next wave of young indigenous poets. We are like any other living American poets who venture into the craft with the tools of knowledge and creativity to ride the waves of language, even as we also tend to our indigenous cultural systems and communities. Our common language of English, or sometimes Spanish, is a crossing place, as is poetry a common language and crossing place to meet many from all over the world.

These Native Nations poets and their poems included in this anthology therefore become representative of a much deeper and wider field of poetry.

The poems here are not organized around geography. We could begin anywhere on the map, for each place might be the navel place of a creation story, somewhere in the middle of the story, or a place of departure. We begin with the East, or Becoming. The Eastern Seaboard and bordering states were the site of the major push of colonization. The tribal nations here were inspirational to the root culture of America. The Iroquois and Muscogee (Creek) peoples inspired the American democratic government even as these Native Nations were diminished by history. East is considered the direction of becoming, the sunrise place.

Some of the poems in this section fit symbolically rather than geographically, like “Daybreak” by Jake Skeets, the poem that opens the Becoming/East section. This poem literally provides the template for the anthology’s shape, each section marking the place as the sun of knowing moves from dawn to evening. Each of these poems establishes that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship.

In the Center, or North–South, we are at the middle of the country, far away from the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans, in that physical place which metaphorically represents the belly and the heart of presence and knowledge, of understanding. It is the place of crossroads. These are poems of affirmation, humor, and fury. When reading these poems, you will retreat to tears, to silence created by grief or joy, or laugh aloud. Mahealani Perez-Wendt’s poem is placed here because it centers itself at a crossroads of struggle. “Na Wai Eā, The Freed Waters” is a genealogy of a struggle to uphold the relationship between the taro and human relatives, the struggle for rightful use of water, and for the rights of water to be returned home.

As with any map, we are invested in where we are going. This brings us to the last section: Departure, or West. Here we are looking forward, into the future, constructing fresh meaning from knowledge passed to us by our ancestors and weaving it with fresh experience. The design emerges in our poetry as words, images, and other poetic elements combine with unknown forces.

Navajo poet Luci Tapahonso’s “Ilíígo Naalyéhé: Goods of Value” deconstructs the Navajo way of being and understanding the world: how soft goods of value are those ideals of knowing and behavior, and how they appear in mythical and philosophical constructs. These soft goods find their way into the constructions of what we use, or hard goods such as weavings, baskets, and jewelry, even poetry.

To conclude the mapping is “Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz. The lover and beloved in the poem are the earth, located by lyric in liminal eternity. Yet both are bound by a postcolonial map that would divide, even destroy, them. Before colonization we knew ourselves as earth without question. As we love, we come to know who we truly are, as nations, families, as lovers: “Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds— / The war never ended and somehow begins again.”

Now, we have a map. The soft goods are the mapmaking materials. The mapmaking represented by this anthology comes at a crucial time in history, a time in which the failures to acknowledge, listen to, and consider everyone when making the map of American memory has brought us to a reckoning.

I appreciate how Sherwin Bitsui expresses the quandary of being an indigenous poet writing in English with a Navajo mind and sense of language. As he says in his online commentary for this project, “These two systems merge to create a world attempting to restore itself when change is inevitable.”

Maybe we are at the place where many roads come together under the dimming sun. We must make a new map, together where poetry is sung.

—Joy Harjo, 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate

BECOMING/EAST

JAKE SKEETS

Jake Skeets, Diné (Navajo), is Tsi’naajínii, born for Tábąąhá. He is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers and the winner of the 2018 National Poetry Series and the 2020 Whiting Award.

Quanah Yazzie

Daybreak

abíní hoolzish

:the low-moon horizon turquoise serenes pink-lit

from the pulp and fray of whorled milkweed

summer cypress turkey-feathered struts stark pebbled

through the sheep corral and shade house

beneath the horse trough star thistle and nine-awned grass

reflect night storms and rainbow through the morning

the sun’s rays darling through narrow shoots of cloud, vapor,

or maybe morning fog

hók’ImagesImagesdóó

:above a passing plane or marsh hawk or maybe a crow

casts its wing on the sweet yellow clover and field weed

on the rubble of rust tin can and car axle and wheel barrow

a basketball backboard crafted from sheet metal and piping

the ground crickets beneath moths telling a story as butterflies

they flail and flare through two-needle piñon and ryegrass

cottontails squirrel into the culvert under the main road

now wash-like, parched, its flow sands really memory for water

i’íí’Images k’ad

:salsify and velvetweed overtop a broken fence

its twine, slat, and barbed wire cloaked by dusked sod

dirt road mud walls, tumbleweed, and maybe sunflowers

bow-pulled arc by the metal windmill watering faint wind

the mill echoes awake with each rock thrown

at its face, back, or the bend of its opened arms

bįįh níléíjí da’ayImages—clouds drop their shoulders into rain,

into the coral evening, into the evening’s evening

OFELIA ZEPEDA

Ofelia Zepeda is the author, most recently, of Where Clouds Are Formed. She is Tohono O’odham and a Regents’ Professor and professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona, where she is also the director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI).

Tony Celentano

B ‘o E-a:g maṣ ‘ab Him g Ju:kĭ

B ‘o ‘e-a:g maṣ ‘ab him g ju:kĭ.

Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.

Nañpi koi ta:tk g jewed mat am o i si ka:ckad c pi o i-hoiñad c o ñenḍad.

Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.

Nañpi koi ta:tk g da:m ka:cim mat o ge s-wa’usim s-we:ckad.

Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.

Nañpi koi ta:tk g hewel mat s-hewogim o ‘i-me:

Ṣag wepo mo pi woho.

Nañpi koi hewegid g s-wa’us jewed.

Mat g hewel ‘ab o u’ad.

Nia, heg hekaj o pi ṣa’i woho matṣ o ju:.

It is Going to Rain

Someone said it is going to rain.

I think it is not so.

Because I have not felt the earth and the way it holds still

in anticipation.

I think it is not so.

Because I have not yet felt the sky become heavy with moisture of preparation.

I think it is not so.

Because I have not yet felt the winds move with their coolness.

I think it is not so.

Because I have not yet inhaled the sweet, wet dirt the winds bring.

So, there is no truth that it will rain.

IMAIKALANI KALAHELE

Imaikalani Kalahele, author of Kalahele, is a Hawaiian (Maoli) artist, poet, and philosopher. He is the son of Rebecca Keliiolalo Kalahele, from Waihee, Maui, and Dale Alton Muerlott, from Illinois; husband to Eunice; father of four; and grandfather of fifteen.

Kealiikauila Niheu

Maoli

In the beginning there was a voice

and the voice was Maoli

Singing from before

the first footprint

on our sands

This Maoli was part of the original

echo out of Po

is our ancestor

Before alii . . . before the priesthood

even before the storytellers

Maoli was heard

telling the first stories

singing the first songs

and reading the stars for the first time

Maoli . . . my brother . . . my sister . . . my father . . . my mother . . . my ancestors

Before had england

even before jesus

There was a voice

and the voice was Maoli

ELISE PASCHEN

Elise Paschen is the author of The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities, and Houses: Coasts. She has edited numerous poetry anthologies and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschen is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation.

Jennifer Girard

Heritage

X

The year my mother was born

in Fairfax, Oklahoma,

white men were marrying Osage

women and killing them

for their headrights.

My mother was born a year after

The Indian Citizenship Act was passed—

Indians tied to the U.S.

for or against their wills.

Three years before her birth, her half sister

Baby Ruth’s grave was dynamited

with nitroglycerine by outlaws

scavenging for diamonds

and gold buried inside the casket.

In the Tallchief plot

I wander through family history—

the marble monuments,

angelic statues—measuring

each step on grass,

memorizing photographs.

This one of a striking

beauty, my great grandmother

Eliza Bigheart Tall Chief, 1870–1962,

surviving her husband

by fifty years. The widow, the adored

grandmother of my mother. Eliza.

Only now do I see my name

a permutation of hers.

At home in Chicago

every day I pass

family photographs framed

on walls. My great grandfather’s

oval sepia portrait

of his boyish face

replicated on the headstone.

Instead of the young bride,

here is Eliza, a tribal elder,

wrapped in a multi-colored

blanket, standing outside

her front porch, a photo

taken after all those years

she outlived him.

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

Craig Santos Perez, a native CHamoru from the Pacific island of Guåhan (Guam), is the author of five books of poetry, including Habitat Threshold, and the coeditor of five anthologies. He is a professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Hannah Ensor

Off-Island CHamorus

My family migrated to California when I was 15 years old.

During the first day at my new high school, the homeroom

teacher asked: “Where are you from?” “The Mariana Islands,”

I answered. He replied: “I’ve never heard of that place.

Prove it exists.” And when I stepped in front of the world map

on the wall, it transformed into a mirror: the Pacific Ocean,

like my body, was split in two and flayed to the margins. I

found Australia, then the Philippines, then Japan. I pointed

to an empty space between them and said: “I’m from this

invisible archipelago.” Everyone laughed. And even though

I descend from oceanic navigators, I felt so lost, shipwrecked

on the coast of a strange continent. “Are you a citizen?”

he probed. “Yes. My island, Guam, is a U.S. territory.”

We attend American schools, eat American food, listen

to American music, watch American movies and television,

play American sports, learn American history, dream

American dreams, and die in American wars. “You

speak English well,” he proclaimed, “with almost no

accent.” And isn’t that what it means to be a diasporic

CHamoru: to feel foreign in a domestic sense.

Over the last 50 years, CHamorus have migrated to

escape the violent memories of war; to seek jobs, schools,

hospitals, adventure, and love; but most of all, we’ve migrated

for military service, deployed and stationed to bases around

the world. According to the 2010 census, 44,000 CHamorus

live in California, 15,000 in Washington, 10,000 in Texas,

7,000 in Hawaii, and 70,000 more in every other state

and even Puerto Rico. We are the most “geographically

dispersed” Pacific Islander population within the United

States, and off-island CHamorus now outnumber

our on-island kin, with generations having been born

away from our ancestral homelands, including my daughters.

Some of us will be able to return home for holidays, weddings,

and funerals; others won’t be able to afford the expensive plane

ticket to the Western Pacific. Years and even decades might pass

between trips, and each visit will feel too short. We’ll lose contact

with family and friends, and the island will continue to change

until it becomes unfamiliar to us. And isn’t that, too, what it means

to be a diasporic CHamoru: to feel foreign in your own homeland.

Even after 25 years away, there are still times I feel adrift, without

itinerary or destination. When I wonder: What if we stayed? What if

we return? When the undertow of these questions begins pulling

you out to sea, remember: migration flows through our blood

like the aerial roots of the banyan tree. Remember: our ancestors

taught us how to carry our culture in the canoes of our bodies.

Remember: our people, scattered like stars, form new constellations

when we gather. Remember: home is not simply a house,

village, or island; home is an archipelago of belonging.

SUZAN SHOWN HARJO

Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee) is a writer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Indigenous Peoples protect sacred places and recover more than one million acres of lands. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a founder of the National Museum of the American Indian, Harjo led the successful campaign against the offensive name of the Washington NFL team, and was elected in 2020 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Lucy Fowler Williams

Welcoming Home Living Beings

Today, we welcome home beloved Living Beings

No one alive today has seen them at home, except in dreams

No one we ever met saw them at home, except in dreams

Yesterday, they were stolen, many generations ago

Yesterday, they were prisoners in private houses

Yesterday, they were locked in university basements

Yesterday, they were poisoned and smothered in museums

Yesterday, they were branded with numbers and price tags

Yesterday, they were violated by prying hands and eyes

Yesterday, they were tortured and deprived of all that nourishes

Yesterday, they were alone, many generations ago

Today, we welcome home beloved Living Beings

They come home to us, their many relatives

They return after surviving a long, hard war

They never were meant to be warriors

They were created with holy purpose

As teachers and doctors

As visionaries and guides

As children and parents

As artists and lovers

They were created to balance our minds

To settle the Spirits

To solve difficult cases

To make a peaceful way

To make themselves beautiful

They were created by Creation and loving human hands

As pots and baskets and boxes

As claws and feathers and teeth

As hides and furs and antlers

As hooves and shells and baleen

As pouches and bundles and gourds

As drums and rattles and bells

As clay and cedar and paint

As grasses and reeds and pollen

Today, we welcome home beloved Living Beings

We, their many relatives, have known them all our lives

We, their many relatives, have missed them all our lives

We feed their memory with sacred foods

We nourish their memory with sacred waters

We keep them in our circles

We seek them in the darkest places

We sing the songs they sing

We dance the dances they dance

We pray the prayers they pray

We dream the dreams they dream

Tomorrow, after we welcome home our beloved Living Beings

It will be as if they never left home or us, their many relatives

It will be as if they never left home or us

It will be as if they never left

It will be as if they never

It will be as if

It will be

It will be as if there were no yesterday

It will be tomorrow

RAY YOUNG BEAR

Ray Young Bear, Meskwaki (Red Earth People) tribal member, is the author of Manifestation Wolverine: The Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear. His bilingual poems and songs have been featured in the New Yorker, the Iowa Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, and Native Voices.

Stella Lasley-Young Bear

Wichihaka

Kemekoteweni—we wenetwi

Kemekoteweni—we wenetwi

Kemekoteweni—wewenetwi

Mekoteweni—wewenetwi

Mekoteweni—wewenetwi

Mekoteweni—wewenetwi

Netena—Wasakekwa

Netena—Wichihaka

The One I Live With

Your traditional dance dress is beautiful.

Your traditional dance dress is beautiful.

Your traditional dance dress is beautiful.

Traditional dance dress is beautiful;

Traditional dance dress is beautiful;

Traditional dance dress is beautiful.

I said to Wasakekwa.

I said to The One I Live With.

DEBORAH A. MIRANDA

Deborah A. Miranda is both an enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area and of Chumash ancestry. Her mixed-genre book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir received the 2015 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She is the Thomas H. Broadus Jr. Professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where she teaches literature of the margins and creative writing.

Kevin Remington

Indigenous Physics: The Element Colonizatium

1. The elimination of a substance from a living organism

follows complex chemical kinetics.

For example, the biological half-life

of water in a human being

is 9 to 10 days, with adjustments

for behavior and temperature.

A quantity of carbon-14 will decay

to half its original amount after 5,730 years.

After another 5,730 years,

one-quarter of the original will remain.

And so on.

Obviously, the half-life of a substance

depends upon the substance itself—

measure for toxicity, fierceness, sheer venom.

The research at hand for us today, then, is clear:

what is the half-life of Colonizatium?

Does Colonizatium reduce to half

its initial impact in 50 years?

In 1000 years?

At what point

does Colonizatium become unstable?

Is the half-life of Colonizatium constant over the lifetime

of an exponentially decaying

Indigenous body?

2. To quote a famous Indigenous physicist, sometimes there are complications.

The decay of a mixture of two or more materials,

which each decay exponentially but with different half-lives,

is not exponential.

Take nuclear waste.

Imagine a mixture of a rapidly decaying element A,

with a speedy half-life of 1 second, and more gradual decaying element B,

with a half-life of 1 year.

In minutes, almost all atoms of element A will have decayed

after repeated reductions by half, but

very few of the atoms of element B will have done so,

as only a small percentage of its half-life has elapsed. Thus,

the time taken for such a mixture to fall to half its original value

cannot be easily calculated.

The element Colonizatium is much like nuclear waste:

an unequal mixture of toxic events

with wildly different half-lives.

Start with invasion, war, starvation, rape, murder—

Indian boarding schools, reservations, outlawed religions,

shame.

Include an on-going bombardment of toxic events

over a period of decades:

termination, adopting-out, domestic violence, poverty,

substance addiction, incarceration rates, diabetes,

blood quantum debates, history books, mascots,

white shamanism, fake ndns, police brutality,

anger.

A periodic table of traumatic elements.

3. Given the difficulties

in determining the half-life of Colonizatium,

we might argue the necessity of redirecting

our efforts into other

more profitable calculations.

However,

despite the probabilistic nature of the inquiry,

this as-yet-undiscovered formula

is thought to be paramount for our research

into a chronological prediction

of the Post-Colonial state. Recent studies

indicate that the mixing of elements in unequal toxicities

and immeasurable psycho-social dynamics may best be gauged

not in mathematics

or statistics

or theoretical constructs,

but in the three Indigenous elements

Story, Dance, and Song.

In other words,

Deep Science of a pre-Colonial origin

such as

formulas and algorithms encoded

within ceremonial circles, drums or clappersticks,

the spiraled helix of song,

diagrams of precise footsteps

on discrete portions of empowered earth;

stories plotted like fractal geometry,

the patterned asterisms of stars,

chemical kinetics hammered out

on the bodies of rocks.

Key to such explorations—

the re-emergence

of a fourth Indigenous element:

Dreaming.

This component, long rumored to be permanently lost

or the unstable fantasy of treasure-hunters,

possesses shape-shifting abilities

which have allowed it to survive long periods of hibernation,

enabling structural recuperation and regeneration.

Preliminary work that combines Dreaming

with the three known elements

reveals two astonishing facts:

First) a post-Colonizatium status is, in fact,

impossible to achieve.

Second) Story, Dance, Song and Dreaming

do not calculate nor predict

the half-life of Colonizatium.

Rather,

when applied to the Colonized subject,

these four elements

hasten the decay of Colonizatium,

pull the heavy history into themselves,

break it down

the same way maize, mustard greens, pennycress,

sunflowers, Blue sheep fescue, and canola

transform heavy metals.

The same way water hyacinths suck up mercury, lead, cadmium,

zinc, cesium, strontium-90, uranium

and pesticides,

the same way bladder campion accumulates copper,

Indian mustard greens concentrate selenium, sulphur, chromium.

The same way willow, Salix viminalis, absorbs uranium and petrochemicals.

And—

once the willow’s bio-mass concentrates heavy metals,

once Story, Dance, Song and Dreaming do their work,

the willow rods must be woven

into baskets

in what might be called

a miraculous exponential,

were we not, of course, privy to the facts.

We must revise our aim, therefore, toward rapid

decay of Colonizatium,

or, De-Colonization.

4. Start with Story.

Work your way

home.

Huwa.

ELIZABETH WOODY

Elizabeth Woody is the author of three books of poetry: Hand into Stone, Luminaries of the Humble, and Seven Hands, Seven Hearts. She has published essays and short fiction and is a visual artist. She is Diné (Navajo)/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Oregon.

Native Arts and Cultures Foundation

Coquille

Watching the traditional canoe

Like a sheep horn, brown and rustic, the canoe pitches to one side—takes water.

With an exterior of finality, imaginatively halved, the cedar is quite old.

Half similar or half alien is a decision.

The curl of the paddle motions on one side and its reverse.

North and southern contrasts sea faring parallels of the

equator, akin to our navel above gender, reminiscent of central connections.

A tree crest points to venerable lineage.

One must accept oscillating internal realms, the tinder of fusion,

kissing blossoms of recognition.

Light and synthesis is sustenance and growth by these terms.

What of weighted limbs of the hanged?

The orphaned children met from a momentous crux of fortune changing hands.

A vigilant helix bends into tomorrow.

Eastern rise of simple trill funnels into the high idioms of justice.

There are survivors who know ropes of ideology—the carnage.

Truly wild geese call out a black series of condolences.

Cadence of connection and rote of mutual landing

patterned to triangles gathering and deltas.

The geese travel the points between testing each moment.

Antiquity finds its anchor in turmoil. This is the forfeiture,

solace, soft compassionate wetlands in the clarity of receding drifts.

It is the rain that mixes into heap of leaves a disciplined humid scent.

Shimmer of rippling bay reaches for the bow of simple resurgence.

Brown symbolic float Affinity and certain terms of reparation.

HEATHER CAHOON

Heather Cahoon is an award-winning poet, artist, and policy scholar from the Flathead Reservation, where she is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Her chapbook Elk Thirst won the Merriam-Frontier Award at the University of Montana; and her first full-length collection of poems, Horsefly Dress, was published in 2020.

Heather Cahoon

Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman

so-called because he was sckwełťelénč, “cut out of the stomach”

as an infant. Indeed, he survived the un/believable, a lucky break,

to become the only living member of his immediate family.

Another lucky break, he won his race against the cold birds,

earning the right

to make a law that they could no longer control all the weather,

ending the age of ice.

Next, he gathered his families’ bones

their marrowed limbs, each rib, forearm

and finger.

Covering them with his blanket, he jumped over

four times,

bringing them,

each one

back

to life.

•

These are the stories that belong here,

that pushed up through this soil unfurling

as arrow-leaved balsamroot leaves and boulders found in unusual

places.

How else does a thing enter this world

now so changed we struggle to hear the shapes of a language

that no longer fits every ear.

Each story word frag-

mentmoves

over hills the highest reaches of trees

without catching in memory.But

the crispness of Snlaq’éy of Kwĺncutn like fire

crackle the flick of sound a body remembers.

(Sckwełťelénč: “Cut out of the stomach;” the name of the part of the weather, or a weather being, whose actions brought about the end to the last Ice Age. Snlaq’éy: Sweat lodge. Kwĺncutn: Creator, Maker of Ways/Mannerisms, also referred to as Amotqn or Great Spirit.)

JENNIFER ELISE FOERSTER

Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of two books of poetry, Bright Raft in the Afterweather and Leaving Tulsa. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she received a 2017 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, she lives in San Francisco.

Richard Bluecloud Castaneda

Notes from Coosa

I find you nowhere that is here or there.

Below the sunken Uchee path—iron ore.

The ridge dividing water, veined with it—

pea vine, wiregrass, short-leaf hickory.

Old fields’ flood plains, indigo-dyed.

When the woods were still dense, saw palmetto,

grapes of the hills destroyed by fire

and the haw chestnut by the hatchet.

If it were easy to leave our bodies

in the fork of Red River, two mounds of earth.

If it were easy to leave you behind

in a stream clear with flowering stones—

to find you in the language where I lost you

as if you were a sentence in this poem

and this poem an archive of the forest.

But I have burned the remaining pine.

On the bluffs, strawberries thinly scattered

and in the old beaver ponds, briar root,

a bread made of it for times of famine.

LEANNE HOWE

LeAnne Howe, author of Choctalking on Other Realities, is a writer, playwright, poet, scholar, and filmmaker. She is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature in the Department of English at the University of Georgia and an enrolled citizen in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Daniel McCreary

1918 Union Valley Road Oklahoma

I

Maybe it was while reading the 1918 Union Valley Bulletin

A political handbill given John Hoggatt by a hacking cougher at the feed store

Maybe it was the sour apple gone mahogany black that he’d eaten from his wife’s cellar stash

He knew he should have given it to Trudy their hog

Maybe it was the six-mile walk to and from his father’s farm in Stonewall

Just to ask, need help with that heifer, Pop?

Maybe it was the burning tingling running over the top of John’s head

As if he was being roasted alive, filling him with fear

He coughed into his fist, no

Iva honey, lock the gate so the Crowder boys can’t steal our cow

He coughed into his fist, no

Iva honey,

He coughed into his fist

Iva, so cold.

Winds like a siren whip the Junipers outside, maybe 90 per,

He swayed left, and then right, and onto their Jenny Lind bed

A wedding gift,

Coveralls still on.

II

Shocked into

consciousness

by sunlight

Iva supports

herself with her

arms and leans

forward Eyes

mucus glued

Has she been

crying in

her sleep?

The bed

is cold, the

stove out Her

long black

hair matted by

high fevers. In

her dreams,

the sound

of a gurgling

brook She

looks

at John, her

teeth chattering

He is completely

blue now. She

presses on

John’s

chest. Blood

and mucus slip

between his blue

lips Breathe, John,

Breathe.

Don’t

worry I

gave our baby

girl to your

sister, Euda

Yesterday,

the day

before,

maybe last

week, but

she’s safe.

Didn’t make

a sound, just

waved bye-bye,

Bye-bye,

Mommy

bye-bye.

Like you,

she doesn’t

complain Like

you, she’s more

Irish than

Cherokee—

like me.

Breathe, John,

Breathe. Take

a breath, John

Hoggatt. How

many times?

Iva curls

up by his

side, played

out Who hast

never bruised

a living

flower, she

whispers. Now

I lay

me down

to sleep I

pray

the Lord

my soul to

take.

Breathe,

John.

III

The sun is yet a rumor

Iva sleeps like the dead

Until she doesn’t.

On the third day she feels herself rising

Everything a moving cloud,

She observes herself in the mirror

Washes her mahogany cheeks

That’s odd, she thinks

Lock the gate, John,

Or the Crowder boys will steal our cow.

She coughs into her handkerchief

John honey,

She coughs into her handkerchief

John honey,

She coughs into her handkerchief

Hear me.

Yes Iva

You live in unmeaning dreams, he says,

The grave is ready.

John honey

Stay

I washed your Sunday shirt

Hung it on the line to dry

We can bury our faces

In summer laundry

Taste the scent of sun

In a field of light

Breathing as one

Stay

IV

Iva is dreaming again

She hears his name, John,

The sound like a bell on her tongue,

John

on

on

on

g-

Breathe

LAURA DA’

Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. She is Eastern Shawnee. Her first book, Tributaries, won the American Book Award and her newest book is Instruments of the True Measure, which won the Washington State Book Award in 2019.

Jarrod Da’

The Rhetorical Feminine

Gliding from the confluence of Battery Rock

to the Devil’s Backbone inside the Shawnee

National Forest makes a sound I cannot

duplicate in English. With one finger tracing

the route on an atlas, my tongue wet

with nostalgia—a waterlogged migration

by touch. I seek the cities without the words.

As late somebody’s 1810 there were headwater

communities of women for the express purpose of healing,

birthing, governing shared territory—crouched

in the frog-legged stance of delivery and defense.

Linguistic evidence suggests a pattern of feminization

in Shawnee rhetoric. Nation of women,

bellowed strangers even as river city

dialects mouthed spells that cured war like hides

and curved breech births veiled in water

to the banks of living territory. Gliding from the confluence

of Battery Rock to the Devil’s Backbone

inside the Shawnee National Forest

makes a sound I cannot duplicate in English.

LEHUA M. TAITANO

Lehua M. Taitano is a queer CHamoru writer and interdisciplinary artist from Yigu, Guåhan (Guam), and cofounder of Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century. She is the author of two volumes of poetry, Inside Me an Island and A Bell Made of Stones. Taitano’s work investigates modern indigeneity, decolonization, and cultural identity in the context of diaspora.

Lehua M. Taitano

Current, I

The conventional symbol for current is I, (I) originating from the French intensité de courant , an intensity of electrical flow measured as a quantity per unit of time.

Consider: we are made almost entirely of water and electricity.

So our vernacular

of emotion employssurge

wavespark,

impulseandcurrent,

the flood of salt

or rush of crackling

bluepulse, of

arcing rivulet.

A measurement of with and without.

The ecstatic penetration of sperm

into egg—

we have all seen

the microscopic

iconography.

The wombless State

will ordain

this

the electric moment of life

will brand each womb sanctified

property.

My mother was conceived

during a war waged onbrown bodies

and birthed

me under a moon obscured

by flags.

Electric layers of oceanreveal

themselves as

an ancestral codingof me and herand her and her

as the spear and the

plunge,

the cavern of handprints

the caverns of decapitation.

The lightning spark cannot be created because it was already there.

In the gloam human nostalgia

presses to knowwhere

when whichgods’ touch

(the first impulse of light into

darkness)

first enacted a separation of shadowinto meaning,

yetIforkbead

ribbon thelight

into existence insistence

with eachsloughing

of saltwaterblood,

each recollection of current.

(I)

Tano I CHamoru.

Our people

were shaped from stone

andthe

pulsing

sea..

Sister’s crouched

body

wave kneaded

saltlapped

untilwe tumbled

from her

of her(of them)

all strong strongand

whole

together.

Birds

regarded

our sea foam

anklets

our slippery ropes

of hair our

cheeksfull

of

pebbles

and scattered from the shore

singing.

We openedour new

mouths

toour

ownchorus

crooning

SisterBrother

we are

sun

moon

sky

water

earth

all

siblings.

(I)

I believe in reincarnation

in so muchas

I knowan ancestor

passedtome

the memory of

makingoneself

intoa universe.

One.

Self.(I)

connected to, no—

concurrentwith

everyiterationof

subatomicmovement.

How, then

am Iqueer?

Queer?

Queered?

I amalsoonly

(queer)because

there is

a world

outside of mine.

Ifthe world were

only me,

I wouldseemjust so.

A microcosmos

ofanimal

mineral

plantlight.

Electric, I.

(I)

Yet,the world.

Here is what I can say:

I amI.Warrior, I.Glacier, I.

Photon, I.Vine, I.

Rivulet, I.Integer, I.Summoner, I.

Wave, I.Exhalation, I.

Mother, I.Lava, I.

Hilum, I.Hypha, I.

I.I.I.

(I)

Prism, I.Andculture bending

throughme.

The worldspitsgrapples

triesto tieme up inbasements

to ridthemselvesof myinsistence.

Ancestorwired me a path

within.

Inside the brick spaces

throughout and becoming

the walls

and

clouds, I.

Swallow bolts, Iexpand

IemptyI

carrywithin

a hundredthousand

wombsofspectacular

light.

ROBERTA HILL

Roberta Hill (also known as Roberta Hill Whiteman), Oneida, is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and scholar whose poetry collections include Star Quilt, Her Fierce Resistance, Philadelphia Flowers, and Cicadas: New and Selected Poetry. She was a professor of English and American Indian Studies, affiliated with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, until her retirement in May 2020. She has read her poetry internationally and currently lives and writes in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin.

Focal Flame Photography

These Rivers Remember

In these rivers, on these lakes

Bde - wa ’- kan - ton -wan saw the sky.

North of here lies Bdo - te ,

Center of the Earth. Through their songs,

the wind held onto visions.

We still help earth walk

her spiral way, feeling

the flow of rivers

and their memories of turning

and change.

Circle on circle supports us.

Beneath the tarmac and steel in St. Paul,

roots of the great wood are swelling

with an energy no one dare betray.

The white cliffs, I - mni -za Ska,

know the length of Kangi Ci’stin’na’s tears.

He believed that words spoken

held truth and was driven into hunger.

Beneath the cliffs, fireflies flickered

through wide swaths of grass.

Oaks grew on savannahs, pleasant

in the summer winds where deer

remain unseen.

These rivers remember their ancient names,

Ha - ha Wa’-kpa, where people moved

in harmony thousands of years

before trade became more valuable than lives.

In their songs, the wind held

onto visions. Let’s drop our burdens

and rest. Let’s recognize our need

for awe. South of here, the rivers

meet and mingle. Bridges and roads,

highway signs, traffic ongoing.

Sit where there’s a center

and a drum, feel the confluence

of energies enter our hearts

so their burning begins to matter.

This is Maka coka - ya kin,

The Center of the Earth.

CATHY TAGNAK REXFORD

Cathy Tagnak Rexford, Inupiaq, is a playwright, poet, and fiction writer from Anchorage and Kaktovik, Alaska. The author of the chapbook Black Ice, which appeared in Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing, Pacific Rim, she currently lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and son.

Nadya Kwandibens, Red Works Photography

Anchorage, 1989

And now, that look on your face:

the same residue you found on

the murre eggs upriver, as if

the damp earth left its fingerprint on your

eyelids as we sat across from each other

in the café. And now, the length

of your legs just short of touching

my legs underneath the table, the memory

of the way we wrapped our limbs together,

eclipsed, like the old village on

that island where we met. And we

would relocate ourselves, or what we

thought it meant to be ourselves.

In Anchorage, when the snow cracked

beneath your feet, and the mountains

seemed a little larger than usual, you

offered your hands, opened. I remember,

not because I thought about taking them,

but because when my hands lay cupped

in yours—both browned of sun—it reminded

me of hunting caribou upriver, squinting

against sunlight, in that rock canyon.

I did take your hands, because it was polite

and you didn’t mean to hold them

for more than a moment; it was the only thing

you could offer then. Now, I straighten

my silverware set on the table, as if

you might tell me what I really want to hear

which was not that we were wrong,

but that our weakness really means

that we are linked somehow with history,

the same history that has brought us

together miles from the old village

on that island where we met.

Those mornings you’d wake up first

to make coffee and listen to water fall from

the edge of the roof in the spring,

are as faint now as the smell of damp earth

beneath concrete. And I cannot look you

in the eye, because sometimes,

eye contact is more intimate than breath

in whispers, like that trip we took upriver,

when our daughter balanced on the edge

of the boat, leaning out, dragging her fingers

in the water, as meaningless now as this

meeting today in the café, listening to

our waitress swear under her breath

as she takes our order, two mugs of coffee

braided in her fingers. A gust of wind

rips through the front door of the café

when a short man in red Chuck Taylors

smiles at me as he brushes the snow from

his shoulders—the kind of man you were

before I found you resting under the

overpass of New Seward Highway this afternoon.

It was an accident finding you

there. I wanted that man standing

next to the flashing jukebox to come over, sit in

your seat and work the Sunday crossword

puzzle with me, but he didn’t. And now, I

leave you, like the old village on that island

where we met, on the corner of Ingra

and 5th Avenue after you asked me

for twenty dollars, but I see now it is the same—

the aluminum boat, the murre eggs,

the coffee dripping over the lip of the mug,

the dark of your eyelids—each held

in drowned memory, the same way our mouths

know the taste of salt, or not salt itself,

but the memory of salt. It is a narrow passage

between breath and memory, leaning inward.

And according to you it wasn’t our

reflexes that failed us, that day on the river

in that second she fell from the boat,

but that we were inexperienced. And now,

in the cottoned quiet of my car, a snowplow

scrapes against hard-packed snow, and

I don’t know how to tell you that I need

the story to take a breath. As we told it

to strangers, suffering the quiet of

silt and current unmoving, doubting,

in the same way, if she too, lay unmoving.

I drove and I refused our directional relation,

where the only word for backward

meant stern and forward meant bow.

And I heard your voice stretching over the

curved tundra, telling me stories of swans

who took flight and fell to the earth

to become humans. It was simple then,

like the old village on that island where

we met. But, when I found you

crossing the street, you were frozen,

drunk, clutching your thermos, your clothes

stitch-marked and thinned and you looked

as though you might stand up to argue with me

about life jackets and the way the shallows

in the river had shifted those ten years before

and I would have yelled back at you to slow down,

but all that is left is the hum of my Buick

as I wait for you to cross the street,

your breath creating its own cloud formation.

And now, every time I listen to Cat

Stevens, I think of her, so I have set out

all the albums and even the record player

on the street and listen in the morning

to that snow plow that keeps me awake,

thinking of caribou hunting and winding

switchbacks under the 3 A.M. sun. It was

the way each song would sing to the next

song and would sing to lungs filled with

river water. And our voices, alone,

were not enough on the island in the old village

where we met. So I lit a cigarette,

in the early grey light of morning and kept watch.

JOY HARJO

Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is the twenty-third Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and the first Native American poet to serve in the position. She is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently An American Sunrise, and the award-winning memoir Crazy Brave. In 2019, she was awarded the Jackson Prize and was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

Exile of Memory

Do not return,

We were warned by one who knows things

You will only upset the dead.

They will emerge from the spiral of little houses

Lined up in the furrows of marrow

And walk the land.

There will be no place in memory

For what they see

The highways, the houses, the stores of interlopers

Perched over the blood fields

Where the dead last stood.

And then what, you with your words

In the enemy’s language,

Do you know how to make a peaceful road

Through human memory?

And what of angry ghosts of history?

Then what?

Don’t look back.

In Sunday school we were told Lot’s wife

Looked back and turned

To salt.

But her family wasn’t leaving Paradise.

We loved our trees and waters

And the creatures and earths and skies

In that beloved place.

Those beings were our companions

Even as they fed us, cared for us.

If I turn to salt

It will be of petrified tears

From the footsteps of my relatives

As they walked west.

I did not know what I would find

The first night we set up our bed in the empty room

Of our condo above the Tennessee River

They’d heard we were coming

Those who continued to keep the land

Despite the imposition of newcomers

And the forced exile of our relatives.

All night, they welcomed us

All night, the stomp dancers

All night, the shell shakers

All night circle after circle made a spiral

To the Milky Way

We are still in mourning.

The children were stolen from these beloved lands by the government.

Their hair was cut, their toys and handmade clothes ripped

From them. They were bathed in pesticides

And now clean, given prayers in a foreign language to recite

As they were lined up to sleep alone in their army-issued cages.

Grief is killing us. Anger tormenting us. Sadness eating us with disease.

Our young women are stolen, raped and murdered.

Our young men are killed by the police, or killing themselves and each other.

This is a warning:

Heroin is a fool companion offering freedom from the gauntlet of history.

Meth speeds you past it.

Alcohol, elixir of false bravado, will take you over the edge of it.

Enough chemicals and processed craving

And you can’t push away from the table.

If we pay enough, maybe we can buy ourselves back.

We used to crowd the bar for Tuesday ten-cent beer night.

It was the Indian, poetry, biker and student bar

In that university and military base town.

Trays packed with small cups of beer passed non-stop

Over the counter all night.

We brought all of our thirsty dreams there

Gambled with them at the pool table, all night.

Danced with them and each other on the blood-stained dance floor

To jukebox songs fed by dimes and quarters, all night.

And by 2 A.M. we staggered out

To the world made by Puritan dreaming

No place for Indians, poets or any others who would

Ride the wild winds for dangerous knowledge.

All night.

Here there is a singing tree.

It sings of the history of the trees here.

It sings of Monahwee who stood with his warrior friends

On the overlook staring into the new town erected

By illegal residents.

It sings of the Civil War camp, the bloodied

The self-righteous, and the forsaken.

It sings of atomic power and the rise

Of banks whose spires mark

The worship places.

The final verse is always the trees.

They will remain.

When it is time to leave this place of return,

What will we say that we found here?

From out of the mist, a form wrestles to come forth—

It is many-legged, of many arms, and sent forth thoughts of many colors.

There are deer standing near us under the parted, misted sky

As we watch, they smell for water

Green light enters their bodies

From all leaved things they eat—

The old Mvskoke laws outlawed the Christian religion

Because it divided the people.

We who are relatives of Panther, Raccoon, Deer, and the other animals and winds were soon divided.

But Mvskoke ways are to make relatives.

We made a relative of Jesus, gave him a Mvskoke name.

We cannot see our ancestors as we climb up

The ridge of destruction

But from the dark we sense their soft presences at the edge of our minds

And we hear their singing.

There is no word in this trade language,

No words with enough power to hold all this we have become—

We are in time. There is no time, in time.

We are in a Mvskoke village, far back in time.

Ekvnvcakv is in labor, so long in time.

She is not young and beyond the time of giving birth.

The keeper of birthing is tracking her energy, and time.

My thinking is questioning how, this time.

A young boy wrestles with two puppies at the doorway.

A little girl, bearing an old woman spirit appears

With green plants in her hands.

Twins play around the edge of the bed.

The Earth’s womb tightens with the need to push.

That is all that I see because of the fogginess of time.

I sing my leaving song.

I sing it to the guardian trees, this beloved earth,

To those who stay here to care for memory.

I will sing it until the day I die.

CENTER/NORTH–SOUTH

GORDON HENRY JR.

Gordon Henry Jr., an enrolled citizen of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation, is a poet and fiction writer. His writing has been published in numerous anthologies in the United States and has been translated into German, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian. Gordon teaches creative writing and American Indian literature in the English Department at Michigan State University.

Gordon Henry Jr.

River People—The Lost Watch

When we were river people

once in a while you talked different,

different because we were under

the influence of elders—their repetition,

a northern dialect of hands

coming apart in stories.

When we were river people

the sun made an alphabet

of light struck trees

while you sat on a stump

in the yard and rolled

tobacco from the plants

we grew

in the raised beds

by the power

pole.

When we were river people

the dog we took from dog death row

at the shelter got cancer and

we put her in the ground near

where young thunder woman

learned to hit golf balls

toward an old shirt on a stick

where every shot was lost.

When we were river people we made medicine

for Zahquod and fasted and sweat at dawn

for four days, following Eagleheart’s instructions.

Zahquod drank the tea for a few months

and died the following fall.

When we were river people we put stones

in the mailbox to keep the weekend rowdies

from hitting it again while we slept

and we drove

to town every Thursday to

take Anungoonce to tap class.

There were boys after her after that

and we let one in.

There she held him close often and made sure

he got his needle before he stupored in

dropping sugar.

When we were river people

big leaf rhubarb grew,

wild Turkeys walked in the mist

up the drive

a few big hens in front

and the gas man apologized when

he saw you talking with pwaagun

early one Friday when you heard the news

about Zahquod starting on interleukin 2.

When we were river people you listened

to Townes every day for a week of summer

‘to live is to fly’ he said ‘both low and high’

he said

he reminded you of Smoke

with his cracked hard

Oklahoma voice

the week you watched his horse

and the belly laugh his goddaughter

Anungoonce let loose

outside the barbed wire

pasture fence as Seguili the horse ran.

When we were river people we lost power

for five days one winter, so we braced

ourselves on fallen logs when we shit outside

and we fed the woodstove and slept on the

floor and drove to Canadian Lakes to shower.

When we were river people

singing woke you one night

and you ran outside asking

the stars and the creator to help

you remember the words

remember the words

Giizhay manidoo have pity

Giizhay manidoo bring healing.

When we were river people Geeshik

Eway Abaat would not talk to you

though you kept asking to let your love

for her find its way to her, so you could

tell her about the shooting star and her birth

under a formation of white cranes

And so you could laugh with her

about when she was three,

when she came crying out

of the sweat with Grandma Rose.

When we were river people visitors

came with strangers and strangers came with

friends to bring wood and stones for namings

sweats and thirsty dance sings and all those

gifts Eagleheart shared with you

when you lived out west.

When we were river people deer

ran through morning by morning

one morning a string of them

one walking wounded outside

hobbling on three legs, an arrow

through the fourth, outside the

window as you made breakfast for all

the girls who came looking for Nawgwayawp

stayed overnight after the dance.

When we were river people there was

no time for writing, too many people

were dying, too many children were

growing, there were too many ceremonies

to make, too much firewood to cut, too many calls,

too many fasts, too many trips to

White Earth and Turtle Mountain

too much burned gas

too many names requested

to be given, to people you know

who still don’t know who they are,

too many appointments, disappointments,

too much tired talk, the difference between

going to sleep and staying up

already past deciding.

When we were river people

Crow knew just like you know now

a stone is no place for a watch

as you know what we call time

can’t be made up with words

lost, or remembered, or held down

to earth, or be left behind

by blessings, forgotten, or be any more

than a relative of light, who returns home,

as bright clear sun reporting all

that has gone between rising and falling.

DUANE NIATUM

Duane Niatum, Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, has been writing poems, stories, and essays for more than sixty years. He is the author of ten books of poems, most recently Earth Vowels and the chapbook Sea Changes. The legends and traditions of his ancestors help shape and animate his poetry. Niatum has made a lifelong study of European and American Indian art, literature, and culture.

Marti Spencer

Old Humptulips

For my Grandfather, Francis Patsey

In the spirit of seawater,

you jump from one boulder to another,

and with the quick dip of the hand

you draw from under the next rock

a fifth sculpin, grab it by the gills,

a fish our people say sings to us,

a gift you will clean and roast on the beach fire

for your love and grandchildren.

Your new neighbors that came from the East

stare at you from outside the circle,

behind a blackberry bush, curious

yet guarded and unattached.

They have settled in the ruins of your family’s

abandoned village of white fir and cedar.

They surround your crumbling longhouse

plagued with a disease no shaman understood

or could fight with rattle, smoke or song.

These settlers fear your sculpin dance

and refuse to join your family feast.

So you imagine they are grey willows

vanishing on the wind of mountain guardians,

step toward the beach, a whirling

sunspot on the sand print of strangers.

ANITA ENDREZZE

Anita Endrezze is an artist and a writer. Her most recent book of poetry, Enigma, was published in 2019. Anita is Yaqui, Pima, and Maya as well as half European (Slovenian, German, and Italian).

Maja Hansen

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Indian

1

Among twenty Indians only one

has skin as coppery as a penny

and she sprayed it on.

2

If you’re a half-breed,

you’re always of two minds

but your heart is Red.

3

Coyote whirls in dust devils,

grinning in the heart

of our stories.

4

A man and a woman

(or a man and a man

or a woman and a woman)

are one. A human and Coyote

are trouble.

5

I don’t know which I prefer:

Native American, ndn, Indian.

Skins or sly innuendos from Coyote

as he saunters down the street,

whistling, “Yo, mamacita, you bad honey!”

6

I grew up half white, but

Coyote’s shadow is moody, dark-twin

to mine.

7

O Non-Native—ndn—injuns! Why do you exterminate

Coyote? Hang his pelt on barbed wire, string

his ears on your belts? Do you not see how Coyote

is part of this land, the dreaming and scheming

of Thought into Existence? Without Coyote

America would be a reservation of flat jokes

and fizzled life.

8

I grew up in Southern California where rivers

are cement troughs and Coyote sang from Hollywood Hills.

My aunts wouldn’t say they were Yaqui

because that meant death or slavery in Sonora.

So they were Mexican with indigenous rhythm.

9

When the Conquistadors came

or the priests or the Pilgrims

or Walmart, we ran away. We ran in circles

from death in one land to death in another,

and Coyote was always there, holding our souls

in the depths of his howl.

10

At the smell of smudged sage at the powwow,

the white cop sniffed sharply, looking for some Indian

smoking weed.

11

I tried riding in a canoe and almost tipped over.

Horses scare me. My car has scars along its flanks

from spatial misjudgments as I back out of the garage.

My kind of Indian is self-defined. It’s whatever I do,

however I do it. I’m not scared of who I am.

12

Fry bread is a recent tradition. Corn is older

and part of my DNA. Corn is sacred, pollen flying

into a world turned golden. Like Coyote’s fur.

13

Today lasted centuries. Coyote sits next to me,

whispering promises of survival: mañana. It is tomorrow

and will always be tomorrow.

Stars shine all day, forever, and we don’t see them.

Ours souls, whether white or ndn or Other, shine even longer.

There are more than thirteen ways of seeing anyone.

NILA NORTHSUN

nila northSun, Shoshone/Chippewa, has been writing for more than four decades and has had six books published, including love at gunpoint. She lives on her reservation in Fallon, Nevada.

nila northSun

i gotta be Indian tomorrow

i came back to Nevada

because somebody decided

they needed a native american

on their radio show

& i came to mind

i’m flattered

& my ego drove me

200 miles over snow packed mountains

but now

before the interview/reading

i’m panicked

i haven’t written an “Indian poem”

in a long time

maybe only 1 out of 100 poems

even touch my tribal-ness

they think just because

i am native

means anything

i write somehow is rooted

in native-ness

but in flipping the pages of

my 3 ring binder

i find nothing mentioning

mother earth or feathers or reservations

even though

i stand on mother earth

& my rearview mirror has

an eagle feather tied to it

& after the interview

i’ll be going back to the reservation

to see my family

is that indian enough

for them? i don’t know

i guess it will have to be

tomorrow

i’ll think deeper

about being indian.

BRANDY NA-LANI MCDOUGALL

Originally from Kula, Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall is of Kanaka ‘Ōiwi (Hawai‘i, Maui, and Kaua‘i lineages), Chinese, and Scottish descent. She is the author of a poetry collection, The Salt - Wind : Ka Makani Pa‘akai, and has edited three anthologies of poetry from the Pacific region. She also served as a contributing editor for When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and Jennifer Elise Foerster.

Craig Santos Perez

This Island on which I Love You

And when, on this island on which

I love you, there is only so much land

to drive on, a few hours to encircle

in entirety, and the best of our lands

are touristed, the beaches foam-laced

with rainbowing suntan oil,

the mountains tattooed with asphalt,

pocked by telescoped domes,

hotels and luxury condos blighting

the line between ocean and sky,

I find you between the lines

of such hard edges, sitting on

the kamyo stool, a bowl of coconut,

freshly grated, at your feet.

That I hear the covert jackaling

of helicopters and jets overhead

all night through our open jalousies,

that my throat burns from the scorch

of the grenaded graves of my ancestors,

the vog that smears the Ko‘olaus into a blur

of greens, that I wake to hear the grind

of you blending vegetables and fruit,

machine whirl-crunching coffee beans,

your shoulder blades channelling

ocean, a steady flux of current.

Past the guarded military testing grounds,

amphibious assault vehicles emerging

from the waves, beyond the tangles

of tarp cities lining the roads, past

the thick memory of molasses coating

the most intimate coral crevices,

by the box jellyfish congregating under

‘Ole Pau and Kāloa moons, at the park

beneath the emptied trees, I come

to find you shaking five-dollar coconuts

(because this is all we have on this island),

listening to the water to guess

its sweetness and youth.

On this island on which I love you,

something of you is in the rain rippling

through the wind that make the pipes

of Waikīkī burst open, long brown

fingers of sewage stretch out

from the canal, and pesticided

tendrils flow from every ridge

out to sea, and so we stay inside

to bicker over how a plumeria tree

moves in the wind, let our daughters

ink lines like coarse rootlets

in our notebooks, crayon lines

into ladders on our walls

and sheets. Their first sentences

are sung, moonlit blowhole plumes

of sound calling pebbles to couple,

caverns to be carved, ‘uala to roll

down the hillside again, and I could

choke on this gratitude for you all.

This island is alive with love,

its storms, the cough of alchemy

expelling every parasitic thing,

teaching me to love you with

the intricacies of island knowing,

to depend on the archipelagic

spelling of you lying next to me,

our blue-screen flares their own

floating islands after our daughters

have finally fallen asleep,

to trust in the shape and curve

of your hand reaching out to hold mine

making and remaking an island our own.

CARRIE AYAGADUK OJANEN

Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen is an Inupiaq writer from the Ugiuvamiut (King Island) tribe. She received her master’s in fine arts from the University of Montana and is the author of Roughly for the North.

Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen

Tiimiaq, something carried,

—for Joan Naviyuk Kane

in a book

we read about these things

in a book

carved figures

aŋun, aġnaq, migiqłiq

each word I know

as a dictionary

entry

take this away

and give paper

in return

my tongue against the ink

is English

naluaġmiut

sucking in the flimsy fibers

spewing out a stumbling word

I teach them to Sinaġuk and Paniataaq

all wrong

they round the words in their small mouths

small rivers, small stones

don’t pity me, they are heavy stones

but they are the small rivers

I drop the stones into

Classrooms stand between us, Aakaŋ

but their language classes taught me

how to learn from books.

The years I spent away at college

bring me back, Aakaŋ.

This is how to learn a foreign tongue

from books.

still, from a leather pouch small figures

tumble out—aŋun—perhaps aaŋauraq or iŋmi—his hood around his shoulders

aġnak—perhaps nuliaq—how tenderly her brown atigi is distinguished

atausiq qituġnaklu atausiq paniklu

one and one

tiimiaq in a small pouch, in a pocket or aġġinaq,

like portraits on my phone

in case of long separation

the ice floe shakes loose and tumbles him south

a village, elsewhere, all winter

they are remembered

just so, tenderly, the small figures,

placeholders, bringing to mind his beloved.

even now the residual tenderness

travels across the sterile page

the image of the images

of the beloved

love refracted through the making cannot be contained

in the dry clinical photo, even now,

the beloved tug patiently across the distant page

at the thread strung between their hearts

even the collection

the price of the sale

of the figures

their storage in a catalogued archive (or disposal)

cannot undo the stringing of that tenderness and memory

it strums a note familiar, but unique,

one reaching toward four

the hands that carved them to remember

and distance that memory traveled

and tugged at his heart, remain.

just so, I carry this memory with me,

of Ugiuvak, of four women and a man climbing

a steep ice cliff

and a small gathering of poets

each of us making, just so, our small figures

to be carried

what we are making cannot be undone

DENISE SWEET

Denise Sweet (Anishinaabe, White Earth) is the author of a collection of new and selected poems, Palominos Near Tuba City. Denise is also a First Nations organizer and worked with the Wisconsin tribes to impact Native voter turnout in 2020.

Kara Counard

Palominos Near Tuba City

In the desert of burning dreams, of armadillo and centipede,

I would call this night pitch dark back home

I would watch for any star to pass into dream song

or point of light called planet to whirl and twist like

a tiny pinwheel swallowing me to its vanishing point

Here under pewter sky with words out of breath

I chase poems down like wild mares into fenced corrals

I watch close calls with wisdom rear and kick

against the fences of good judgment.

I used to think the skies brought them home,

thundering hooves and swollen bellies, ready to spark

and fire the dry bony floor, sulfuric aroma real as rain.

But now, the horses of white lightning gallop toward me

afraid of nothing, they rush with an eye for hesitation

ready to brush up against my heart with their horse madness.

Here, it is the rider standing in the wavering heat, erect

and indisputable as a lightning rod braced in the open

I stand my ground and wait, ready to hold on for dear life.

LOUISE ERDRICH

Louise Erdrich, author of Original Fire: Selected and New Poems, is a poet and novelist and the owner of Birchbark Books. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota.

Hilary Abe

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.

Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.

Don’t even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic—decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don’t even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

HEID E. ERDRICH

Heid E. Erdrich’s book Little Big Bully won a National Poetry Series award in 2019. She is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.

Chris Felver

Peacemaking

We long ago made a peace—a treaty—

between enemy neighbors

like this

striped blanketssashes worked with colored beadsanimal-shaped pipes

of red stoneiron hatchets inlaid with lead designsflutes carved to look

like a duck or goosebelts woven with colored threadsbrass bells

copper water vesselsred woolrich gifts to seal the peace

Sometimes the deal did not go down

Some wanted moreto be upheld as great men(yes—only men)

We take your names with us to speak in honor of your greatness always

and when we ever hear your name, we will say “That is a great man you speak of”

and we will tell the stories of all the deeds you’ve done and how fine a figure you

made, how arrayed in fine clothes, and how many horses and how large your voice . . .

You get the idea

Except we had to mean itirreversibly

Even though those men might have stolenbroken familiesmurdered

or maybe it was their thieving sons we killedeven then we had to forget

and mean what we said

Imagine how hard it would be to humble ourselves to humanity

Tell their stories as if they were our brothers-fathers-kin folk—with pride

As if just making peace with them made them relatives whose shine

shined on us

We seek your peace now

for futures we cannot gift amends

unless like this

sleep—under blanketsbeads of bright creatures pollinating flowersanimals

red stoneironflute songduck and gooseearth full of microbes

and mineralssun stored to serve youwind making light and nights cool enough

water and vessels to drink—all once a given then a giftfuture riches

You get the idea

We came in peace but left the aftermath of war like mud tracked in

messed up your carpets and ate all your bread

left milk jugs empty in the fridge and worsemuch worse

Let our peace be one you can reverse

No gift can be enough—if we left you and

even gonewe keep stealing your summersleaving just the storms

if we left you winters brutal beyond historybirds gone and bugs in tornadoes

all the fish guttedwater run off

It would be OK thento reverse the peace we made when you were born

You do not need to hold up our namesirreversibly

only do not curse as you say them or

pleaseleave us off as relatives—

make us ancestors onlyas worthy as names on paper signs

Uphold the great ones

and if we can’t be them

don’t speak our names at all

HENRY REAL BIRD

Henry Real Bird, author of Wolf Teeth, is a rancher and educator who raises bucking horses on Yellow Leggins Creek in the Wolf Teeth Mountains. He was born and raised on the Crow Indian Reservation in the tradition of the Crow by his grandparents, Mark and Florence Real Bird, and he still speaks Crow as his primary language. He served as the Poet Laureate of Montana from 2009 to 2011.

Kevin Martini-Fuller

Thought

“Thought is like a cloud

You can see through shadow to see nothing

But you can see shadow

When it touches something you know,

Like that cloud’s shadow

Touching the Wolf Teeth Mountains.

When the clouds touch the mountain’s top

Or where it is high

The wind is good

When you’re among the clouds

Blurred ground among fog,

You are close to He Who First Did Everything,”

Said my Grandfather Owns Painted Horse.

We are but nomads asking for nothing

But the blessings upon our Mother Earth.

We are born as someone new

So then

We have to be taught

The good from the bad.

What is good, we want you to know.

What is good, we want you to use,

In the way that you are a person.

SY HOAHWAH

Sy Hoahwah earned a master’s in fine arts from the University of Arkansas and is the author of two books of poetry, most recently Night Cradle. He is Yapaituka Comanche and Southern Arapaho.

Isis Hoahwah

Hell’s Acre

I. The Hex

Last person doctored on Hell’s Acre,

was an alcoholic ex-boxer.

Supposedly, later that year, he exhumed all his dead pets

and moved out of state.

I was on Hell’s Acre

because I was hexed

by looking into a broken piece of mirror

wrapped in a black silk handkerchief

placed inside my boot.

Ever since, a skeleton followed me,

always trailing so closely behind

like a friend sending me off on my way.

On the west side of the mountains, pine needles were sharper.

I heard a far-off river valley.

I heard panthers summoning rain

to hide their wedding.

The skeleton got scared and held my hand.

The skeleton held my switchblade

on our way down an ancient hog trail.

“Oh, there goes your corpse again,” the skeleton lullabied.

II. Blood Money

That night, fifteenth night of the month,

the moon hesitated to rise after the sun set.

Throughout the valley, all the lost hunting arrows,

and knives sang.

I made a campfire.

The skeleton made a grave,

roasted marshmallows over this grave.

We slept at the property gate of a paper company.

I dreamed I was back in Indiahoma

with a case of Coors and all my dead cousins.

I dreamed Indiahoma was a pale star

in the rearview mirror.

I dreamed the eight-headed Mupits carried spiral keys.

I dreamed I was helping Quanah Parker move back into the Star House.

I dreamed the winged snakes came back to the sky.

I dreamed I was dreaming about Ten Bears

and how he drove his knife into his own hand

to prove an obvious point to a bluecoat.

I woke up with my hands bleeding like stigmata.

The skeleton was talking in his sleep

about mason jars filled with blood money buried in dead river mud,

about the governor of the Devil’s wardrobe

drinking pop with peanuts floating in it.

I couldn’t tell between the humidity and skeleton breath.

The skeleton woke up,

hanging inverted on the fence with the debris.

That damn skeleton flipped me off

when pretending to offer coffee.

After breakfast, at the first willow tree we came to,

I saw four screech owls under it

throwing their eyeballs into the air

and catching them with their eye sockets.

A fox was learning this.

Every now and then, the bones ask,

“ When are we not in a dream?

. . . When are we not skeletons?”

III. Secret Origin of Esqueleto

It was Saturday

under the sign of the Siamese.

I placed a half dollar

on a crescent-moon altar of caliche clay.

The moon taken, chewed up,

then spat into an empty hand,

and rubbed in a circular motion to the left.

That’s how the wilderness tends to bones.

Every time they prayed for me,

all my worn-out things turned to smoke

and rose to heaven.

Really I was nothing more

than a toothpick from somewhere or another

held in the mouth of an angel

whose name comes from the sound of shivers

it causes

running down people’s spine.

A single deerfly cut across

the space of my breath, hovered close

as we both listened

to the excuse of a hundred eternities.

IV. Skeleton Says

The skeleton says we’re together.

We’re Siamese twins.

The skeleton thinks we’re on an old style horse raid.

The skeleton put an old horse bone in its mouth

to conjure up a herd.

My Siamese twin is a boring partner

and insists beer be served in cold, beveled mugs.

I need to go back to Indiahoma.

He wants to go to Branson.

We set out on a bicycle with a banana seat.

We listen for stray dogs,

rain clouds popping their collars,

for the Comanche Moon wandering the countryside,

who’s not ashamed to laugh

with someone else’s blood on its teeth.

So focused on listening,

we pedal out to where

moonlight breaks like a knife blade on the silence.

V. Raid

Lighting out after Beelzebub,

chimera,

medicine.

I had business.

I climbed down a ladder of wolves

to follow unraveled entrails from an old kill.

One can read the future from such.

I took shelter in abandoned blankets

piled high in moonlight

at the border of the floating world.

During a thunderstorm, Zeus and Jesus

licked the rain off each other’s hands and arms

like wild animals.

I saw their connection.

The skeleton confided in me and said,

The two things you do best

are keeping me from dying and telling scary stories . . .

Then we cut through the Ozarks

like cicadas released by the breath of a vampire.

JOAN NAVIYUK KANE

Joan Naviyuk Kane’s eight books of poetry and prose include the forthcoming Dark Traffic. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Book Award, the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and a Whiting Award. She teaches in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University and also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction at the Institute of American Indian Arts and at Harvard University. Kane is Inupiaq from the King Island Native Community.

Jenny Irene Miller

Rookeries

All men knew a secret of the northern part

of an old world, a less perfect

idea. For the bicornuate woman,

it was an island. Though its birds

lose our trust, we might learn

their language. After all, we have

been taught

to read and write,

to remove our hands

from other work

as we watch water twist into rock:

to cover our wounds,

staying alive light after light.

For something, I worry.

The moon pronounced with clarity

its known topography. Our letters

and lists, reconstructed grammars:

they replace the ways in which we were

grabbed, and pushed, then shoved.

Set a wife and her children

to rove with indefinite orders:

lineal migration on a small scale

is not nautical, but conflictual.

Of those men,

we knew I could never do

them any good. In this way

I forget, and let the wind

river. It gales and tears

at my shoulders and wrists.

M. L. SMOKER

M. L. Smoker is a citizen of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes. Her family’s home is on Tabexa Wakpa. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Another Attempt at Rescue. She earned an Emmy for her work on the PBS documentary Indian Relay and in 2019 she was named to a two-year term as one of two poets laureate for the state of Montana.

Dean Davis

The Book of the Missing, Murdered and Indigenous—Chapter 1

For Natalie Smoker

The winding cord of highways, unkempt

gravel roads and the trails of animals—

a record of who and what has passed over,

an agony of secrets.

In the end, they have all borne witness,

eyes like glass beads that can never blink.

The dull light of motel neon shines ominously.

An engine growls across the landscape.

Brittle men who are splintered like glass

thrown from a second story window

and we are the room they leave behind.

They are pathetic husks, feeble in spirit.

Fragments fall along fields and shallow ditches,

in overlooked alleyways or underpasses.

A cold, empty breeze rising from the debris.

The first and last moment of her.

It is rage that pulls her up from this place.

She spews out the wretched and miserable

as particles of dawn-lit soil illuminate her skin.

Her hair is a two-edged sword.

She stitches together the collective story of origin,

her body a map: descended from the stars,

on the backs of animal sisters,

carried to safety in a bird’s beak.

TANAYA WINDER

Tanaya Winder is a writer, educator, and motivational speaker. She is the author of Words Like Love and Why Storms Are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless. Winder is Duckwater Shoshone, Pyramid Lake Paiute, and Southern Ute.

Viki Eagle

like any good indian woman

i pull my brothers from words, stupid injun, shot like bullets. when people ask why my brothers hated school i say: the spirit remembers what it’s like to be left behind when america took children from homes, displaced families with rupture, ripping a child’s hand from a mother’s to put them in boarding school buildings. my brothers are mourning a loss they try to fix in finding home in another person, so they travel from reservation to city singing blues and 49 songs about love.

                           i pull my brothers from cars named after indians: navajo, cherokee, & tacoma. on a danger destined road my brothers are born longing for a way back from relocation & long walks across miles & miles & miles of removal. my brothers search for themselves in unhealthy addictions disguised as makeshift bandages.

                i pull my brothers from bottles they think answers might be hidden at the bottom of. my brothers stumble through back alleys looking for a love & laughter that was stolen from them like the land. and when their brown bodies try to find healing & love, other brown bodies cringe at their touch because like any good indian woman, our bodies are connected to an earth, still being raped by the pipelines forcibly laid down inside all that we hold sacred. and my brothers hold onto their colonial emotional baggage so tightly they think it’s gravity

                                        so i pull my brothers from oceans believing they deserve the hurt so much they nearly drown themselves in it. and sometimes my brothers knife ancestral grieving onto their wrists, slits to remember the only time we are ever red, skinned is when blood flows from the open wounds america knifed onto our brown skin. self-love: apply pressure.

                                                      i pull my brothers from ashes. america tried to burn us not knowing we were already flame.

& these will be the stories i tell my grandchildren when one day, they ask me—why being a good indian woman means we burn like phoenix repeatedly pulling our brothers.

KIMBERLY BLAESER

Kimberly Blaeser, former Wisconsin poet laureate, is the author of five poetry collections—most recently Copper Yearning, Apprenticed to Justice, and the bilingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-nimi: Dancing Resistance—and editor of Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. Anishinaabe from White Earth Reservation, Blaeser is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and a faculty member in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

John Fisher

Poem on Disappearance

Beginning with our continent, draw 1491:

each mountain, compass point Indigenous;

trace trade routes, languages, seasonal migrations—

don’t become attached.

Yes, reshape by discovery,displacement

move your pencil point quickly now as if pursued—

a cavalry of possession that erases

homelands: we shrink shrink—in time-lapse

of colonial barter . . . disappear.

Now draw a brown face painted for ceremony,

half a face, nothing

.

Draw nothing around a crumbled bird body—

no wings.

Draw emptiness inside desecrated burial mounds,

a stretch of absence where fallopian tubes once curved in hope

sketch void across buffalo prairie, draw the empty

of elk, of passenger pigeons, of silver trout.

Conjure with your hand the shape of girl

blooming, curves of face, her laughing eyes;

you’ve seen them postered and amber-alerted—

missing, missing, evening newsed, and gone.

Draw a woman wrapped in a blanket

a child’s body weighted—draw stones

sinking into every river on the map.

Draw carrion blackening skies, carrion

plucking vision from round brown faces

draw missing, draw murdered.

Work carefully now

turn your hand to the new continent.

Again picture it—

nothing.

MAHEALANI PEREZ-WENDT

Mahealani Perez-Wendt, Kanaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiian), directed an indigenous rights law firm in Hawai‘i for thirty-two years. She has published poetry and short stories and is the author of Uluhaimalama. She and her husband, Ed, are taro farmers on his family’s ancestral lands in Wailuanui, East Maui.

Kaehukai Broadhurst

Na Wai Eā, The Freed Waters

A Story of the People

of Ko‘olau Moku, Maui Hikina

1. Mahi‘ai Kalo, Taro Farmer

All his life loving earth

a living harrow waist deep in mud

planting tilling trenching shoveling plowing

mud to field, gravel to path, stones to bank

yoked no less than animal to plow

a year of this then huki ‘ai, harvest

shouldering the heavy bags

heaving lifting hauling slogging

through acres of taro fields

ancient footpaths fragile ‘auwai wetlands

swollen feet hands torqued elbows knees

pestilences infestations droughts

year after year, year after year

for love of family love of ancestors

love of the Elder Brother

for love of Hāloa.

2. Lo‘i Kalo, Taro Fields

As far as eye could see their green hearts

were laid bare under rains

that never ceased falling a much aggrieved sun

the dim glint of it through upstart clouds

but always the rains and he was glad for the gods’

beneficence and the harbingers who coaxed

sunlight’s bright threads the ‘auku‘u herons hovering

then ensconced in pools

of watery green expanse their emanations of light

vectoring the same paths trod

the same earth the same ancient waterways

the ancestors walked he regarded the plants

hungrily the same green ones whose presentiments

were his Elder Brother Hāloanakalaukapalili

vivified who was born of the gods

Wākea and Ho‘ohōkūokalani their union

a conflagration of heaven and brightening stars

their firstborn, the Elder Brother

stillborn buried Ho‘ohōkūokalani’s tears unceasing

until the quickening

shimmer of green in graven earth

the unfurling leaves

and the risen Hāloanakalaukapalili

progenitor

his offspring the stalwart green-hearted ones

who followed growing up

out of the same earth again and again

he called them koa, warriors

as they hoisted their green banners

forming leaf arbors under sun’s radiance

their stems rooted deep their arbors

protecting parents, grandparents, the corm, mākua

protecting children grandchildren, ‘ohā, the offshoots

succouring cradling them

millennia of generations turning returning

e huli, e huli, e huli ho‘i, the ancestors called

their names auspicious names naming

their offspring in dreams

through keen observations

ho‘ailona, signs

close attentions to minutiae of corm

stem petiole rhizome

shimmering sun wind

sea clouds and earth

cradle of the hallowed ancestors

and the risen Hāloa

give us the right names the mākua prayed

dispatched their entreaties released them

mana ulu, mana ‘ōpelu, mana weo,

mana uliuli, mana ‘ula‘ula, moi, piko,

lehua, ha‘akea, hapa hapapū

were names given

and many more all his life

he knew and never forgot

their names

sacred from the first

they were the names of the generations

of his Elder Brother

they were the names of his family

they were the names of kalo.

3. Maka‘ala, Be Vigilant

Elena his grandmother James and Samson

the grandfathers who brought him to the gods

he followed along the ancient paths

of well-tended fields

the rows of plants who were offshoots

of his Elder Brother green sentinels

as far as eye could see

he sloshed through the maze of waterways

the irreproachable fretwork of ancestors

arrayed he heard

their songs prayers incantations

traceries of winds waters ocean

he heard Pahulena the grandmother’s birthplace

she said her birthplace name

and motioned toward a dense growth

of ‘ ōlena and the tall stand of niu

where ‘ ehukai breezes warmed

the wide river mouth churning

above reddish brown sheen of seaweed limu kohu

spawning place of āholehole, moi, ‘anae,

pāpio, ‘o‘opu, hīhīwai, po‘opa‘a

‘opihi, wana, hā‘uke‘uke, ‘a‘ama

he remembered stories fishing canoes divers their nets

the surround of akule, halalū, mishaps at sea

the kilo i‘a, fish spotter’s lair high above the kāheka

the first catch offered there at the ahu

he remembered his grandmother’s warning

maka‘ala and that after the bosses came

aia nō iā ha‘i nā ‘āina o mākou she said

other men have our lands

then her words went dry

and Pahulena was no more.

4. Waimaka, Tears

There are hidden places

where the high waters fall

in rainbowed silence

sucked in through igneous stone

pulsing the columnar dikes

of earth’s vast waterworks

spilling over soul’s sacred edge

Elena’s tears Elena’s tears.

5. Na‘aupō, Ones Devoid of Light

From sea dregs the onslaught winds

its shifting stars, the detritus tides

carry dark strangers

under cover of night

stealthy ones of fervent prayers

and exhortations Holy Father

bring us safely to the village

Pahulena in the distance

grant us safe conduct

in our sacred mission

to save the unbelievers

for Your greater glory

Amen.

he malihini lākou no ka ‘āina ē

ka ‘āina huna wai no Kāne

strangers they come

to this land of hidden waters

belonging to Kāne

ghosts grey as gunmetal

intractable as cannons

sulphurous gunpowder flashes

their lodestars

at artillery’s first report

the stalwart sons and daughters of Hāloa

rout the shadowy ones

but from dregs of darkness

there is no surcease

wave upon unending wave

commend ravening spirits

to the tasks set before them

conversions appropriations

decimations subjugations

as has been foretold

in their writs

they look upon Hāloa’s people

as pitiable idolaters unclean ones

who must be brought to the One God

and called to atone

from the lost souls’ darkness withal

a Savior shall lead them

their dark paths made light

the Savior’s blood sacrifice

upon Golgotha’s mouldering cross

their lamp of redemption

na‘aupō look with dismay

upon the god Lono’s handiwork

his raft of green mountains

his canopies of forest

they judge these iniquity

evil fruit of indolence

an affront and mortification

to industry

they are disdainful

of Kāne, his Living Waters

flowering to sea

abased are the natives

of this extravagant land

upon their stolid ramparts

na‘aupō recite oaths

their kingdom come

their will be done

they issue the edicts

dispatch the cadres

to bulldoze the lands

build fantastic scaffolding

engineering marvels, masterworks

for excavation of the high mountains

extraction of waters

to bring the vile gods low

to siphon off the lifeblood

from the green realms

of the Elder Brother

the brooding altars are abandoned

the disconsolate moon holds no sway

as the waters are wastreled

the fate of an unrighteous people

turned in dark hands

through a marvel of gravity flow

the waters are extricated

ho‘ohemahema, i ‘ō i ‘ane‘i

dug here, trenched there

tunneled here, siphoned there

the uplands turned into wallows

‘inu ihu pua‘a

for dirty snouted pigs

loosed upon the land

rooting here looting there

through gross machinations

the sacred is harried in ungodly ways

ditches pipes channels

tunnels siphons flumes

aqueducts intakes funnels

dark grasping hands

leering lewd imaginings

broad hillsides of waving cane

the far distant and arid plains

prolific with cane tassels under brightening sun

all of this has been foretold

all has been readied, all paths cleared

the export tariffs have been lifted

foreign labor contracts signed

the people’s protestations—

the devil take them!

the necessary approvals have been given

government officials are aboard

the false idols Kū, Kāne, Lono,

Kānaloa a me mau

banished to the greater glory

of Almighty God!

6. The Fisher of Men

From high promontories

elevated stations of the cross

the bosses offer prayers

for the blessing of verdant lands

mahi‘ai in the fields

lawai‘a at the nets

and there are remembrances

vague recollections

of One Other

a Fisher of Men who once led them

who fed multitudes

with few fish and loaves

the bosses remonstrate with themselves

as the tableau of kua‘āina

unfolds in the lowlands

a childlike people easily duped

to be cajoled lured away

or forcibly removed

from the greening hills

what do they know these unwitting

of the true faith, divine purpose

the higher reckonings

of true believers

little do they know

of theft treachery genocide

deception stealth coercion

the idolators must be readied

for the benefactions of civilization

na‘aupō are filled with saccharine thoughts

of panoramic cane

the lands’ expeditious acquisition

a foregone conclusion

the unrighteous ones’ swift conversion

to a penitent upright people

the gift of civilization

a bargain more than fair

promised by the One God

who from the time of Adam

conferred to His true believers

dominion over the world

these truths being self-evident

the bosses are feverish

with thoughts of unholy war

upon nā kua‘āina the people, their gods.

7. Naming the Waters

I ka wao nahele

in the god-realms of Ko ‘olau

ka ‘Āina i ka Wai a Kāne

the lands of the waters of Kāne

the sons and daughters of Hāloa

named the waters:

where the long waters fell seaward

ravishing black stones

where the eyes smarted from backspray

and in dark depths like stars

the seed pearl oysters

their faint songs could be heard

the name Makapipi was given;

where wī, hīhīwai shells

migrated upstream and down;

where wī groves

grew as thickets

seeding the lands

where wī wind sounds were heard

the name Hanawī was given;

where the waters scudded cloud-like

as though firmament

where a red sheen was seen above

signifying the presence of Sacred Ones

the name Ka‘a‘ula was given;

where the mo‘o goddess

was well-pleased

and smiled at her own reflection

in the shadow waters

the name Waia‘aka was given;

where limestone beds

of ‘āko‘ako‘a formed

and the ulu maika stones were shaped

the name Pa‘akea was given;

the narrow-necked gourds

for water-carrying

gave Waiohue its name;

ravaneous Kamapua‘a

the pig god

his stampeding hordes

gave Pua‘aka‘a its name;

where wauke was kneaded

to kapa of fine transparency

stained with ‘akala berries

for a red birth gift

Kōpili‘ula was the name given;

where two waters converged

and ‘o‘opu scaled waterfalls

where Pele’s sister the sorceress

Kapōma‘ilele removed her genitals

sent them flying to thwart

the rutting pig god Kamapua‘a

his lust for Pele

Wailua - Iki was the name given;

where Kane - i - ka - Pahu - Wai

Kane of the Great Water Source

where he was seen in the heavenly clouds

in the verdant mountainward ridges

where he was seen in the red-tinged rainbow

where he was rain, lightning flashes

where he slept in the glowing light

where his great heart was heard

in the thundering waterfalls

cascading stones quaking corals

where kalo was planted along the high ridges

where it was planted in the wide valleys

where it was planted inland of the teeming shores

kaulana nā ‘āina kalo

a na hoa‘āina

where famous were the kalo lands

and the people who cultivated them

Wailua - Nui was the name given;

where the gods Kāne and Kanaloa

refreshed themselves in springs

near groves of red and yellow lehua

‘Ōhi‘a was the name given;

where the stout-stemmed olonā grew

where in frigid waters the strands

were immersed cured

braided into fine white cordage

for canoe lashings, fishing lines, nets

where it was plaited

for chiefly raiment ‘ahu‘ula,

kahili, lei, mahi‘ole

where the stout-stemmed ōlona grew

Wai‘anu was the name given;

where fine-grained milo

were shade trees for the old chiefs

where windstorms incised the heartwood

the omens carved into god likenesses

made into canoe paddles, serving bowls,

implements for planting

where prolific headwaters

were called moana

the name Waiokamilo was given;

where mai‘a was food curative unguent

where its broad-leaf canopies

were rain-coverings, enclosures

where spring waters bubbled up

through igneous cinder, ‘ākeke

the name Palauhulu was given;

sentience along the high ridges

an exhilaration of climbing, of mounting

gave Pi‘ina‘au its name;

where thundering rains

poured down hollows caves ravines

where the tumult echoed down ridges

sidewise along boulder-strewn sea cliffs

where earth shuddered and heaved

with nū sounds

where great schools of fish hearkened

where the torrents narrowed

Nū‘āilua was the name given;

where the torrents were made wide

Honomanū was the name given;

where hāpu‘u, ‘āmau‘u, hala, ‘ōhe,

niu, loulu, kī, halapepe, ulu

where mamaki, ‘ili`ahi, wiliwili,

koa, palapalai, pala‘a

where kukui, hau, milo, kamani, awa

where cherished forest plants grew

the name Punalau was given;

where tapa-beating logs were harvested

the black and red berries

stained for dyes

the name Kōlea was given;

where a glowing light appeared

above the ridgeline

signifying the presence of Kāne

the name Ha‘ipua‘ena was given;

where in cold springs

ali‘i wāhine bathed

the name Waiakamō‘ī was given;

where the ali‘i wāhine ran

to the flat hiding stone

where she found refuge

from the pig god Kamapua‘a

the name Wahinepe‘e was given;

no ka mea, he mau inoa akua lākou

e ola nō lākou a pau.

in the god-inspired naming

the people remembered

because they remembered

the waters lived.

8. Ko‘olau, The Windward Cliffs

All night

and for endless days like ghost canoes

at full sail under brightening moon

the billowing ‘Ī`ale‘ale winds sweep across

Ko‘olau mountain seacliffs

over razor edged ridges valleys

with thunderous bursts exhalations

obscurations of light

the spectral crew worrying each blade leaf

branch with roaring cascades waterfalls

avalanches rockslides incessant rains

it is the season of ho‘oilo

ho‘īloli ke kai, the sea rages

the god Kanaloa furious his seamounts shaking

he hurls himself against seacliffs

sending ‘a‘ama scuttling over the reefs

shoals corals the staid seaweed

limu wawai‘iole, limu manauea, limu ‘ele‘ele,

limu kohu, limu huluhuluwaena

their swaying frondescences under frothy waves

in the uplands kalo

revel in watery pools

rainbows bead on the leaf-green

arbors of scintillate light

refractions mirrored prisms riven

by Kane-i-ka-Wai-Ola

Kāne takes the form of a night owl

he thrusts his wings and talons

disarming his enemies

Kāne god of the living waters

walks abroad with Lono

scion of water, scion of land together

summoning forth the sacred springs Oiana!

waters gush forth out of earth

the living waters of Kāne coursing to sea.

DEPARTURE/WEST

KIM SHUCK

Kim Shuck is the author of seven books, including Deer Trails. She is also the seventh poet laureate of San Francisco and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Doug Salin Photography

This River

Runs west and

Counter to every story I drank

Deep in those small doll days

Strange, heavy with collective

Unconscious with all of those

West running, improbable relations spending

Lavish hands worth of emotion on this imagined

West in this city which also

Runs west into an ocean that I

Own no stories for, borrowed ocean full of

Marvels fed by these long men who collect different

Water who polish stones that won’t tell me the

Future in any language I know

ALEX JACOBS

Alex Jacobs, author of Loving . . . in the Reagan Era and This Is a Terrorist Act, is a Mohawk visual artist, spoken-word poet, and freelance writer based on the Saint Regis Mohawk Territory on the border between New York and Canada. He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for twenty-seven years, and he travels there to work on art and poetry projects and to attend Indian art markets.

Alex Jacobs

Trudell

I know, I know, I been there

I feel it, I felt it, I been there

I’m scared; I’m scared of what I saw

Scared of what I felt, scared of my thoughts

Scared of knowledge, scared of wisdom

Scared of my ignorance, scared of my arrogance

I’m scared of my life

But I’m strong, strong for my son, strong for my daughter

I’m strong for my mom, she seen it all

I’m strong for my dad, worked himself to death

I’m strong for my loves, all these beautiful women

Who knew me better than I knew my self.

I’m strong for my people, who have been captured, killed,

Put away, tortured, brainwashed, left out to dry.

Strong for my people who think I’m crazy

Strong for my people who can’t see the light no more

Strong for my people who fight every day

Strong for my people who will die far away from home

Strong for the sell-outs, the doubters, the vanished

The banished, the incarcerated, the cancerated, the polluted,

The chronic, the addicted, the consumerated, the consumed.

I’m strong for the traditional, the rational, the practical, the political.

I’m strong for my people who have given up

I’m strong for my people who have been beaten down

I’m strong for my people who have turned their lives around

I’m strong for my people who only care about things

And turned their lives into GNPs CODs ATMs MIAs MFAs

Degrees of disconnection, financial portfolios instead of dreams,

Visions of power replaced by coercion, corruption and greed.

As long as the money flows and the casino tables are green

As long as they think history can never be repeated

As long as they never read the signs or open their eyes

Or listen to elders who hear the earth cry

As long as they allow their own children to become

Indoctrinated by a system that is built on lies.

I want to be strong, strong again

I want to be strong, strong again

But I’m scared, scared for my life

But I’m strong, strong again

Thank you

Thank you, John . . .

B: WILLIAM BEARHART

b: william bearhart is a direct descendant of the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin. He was a graduate of the Lo Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was a poker dealer in a small Wisconsin casino when he was not writing or editing. His work can be found in Boston Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. He died in 2020 during the production of Living Nations, Living Words; his work endures in this collection of living poets.

Thomas Lindfors

Transplant:
After Georgia O’Keeffe’s Pelvis IV, 1944

for that 26-year-old in Florida

Wolves have two stomachs, I only have one

Inside their den, regurgitation of skeleton and then another

There is quiet now in our hospital rooms

Ventilator’s tail pulled from electrical socket

Parents weep a lake. A sky and moon, too

They weep a pelvis. It hangs in a museum

I steal your hip bone, tuck it deep inside my pocket

Where else does a love note fit if not next to a groin

The hip’s eye blue nests a moon

I disguise myself from God

Black robed messenger, two buzzards fight for a kidney

Your mother writes He never met a stranger

O’Keeffe in the desert, her pilgrimage, a transplant

Long after the buzzards and wolves have left

Two pictures of your strangerless face in the post

Two blue eyes, spring starflowers harvested from God’s garden

Organs reaped from a body I didn’t sow

Such porcelain gifts a fragile body sows

I ingest dissolvable moons so that we become strangers

Two skeletons of different stomachs:

One lost in the desert, the other a planet, a god

A wolf swallows his own rib to rebuild all of us

MARCIE RENDON

Marcie Rendon, author of Dreaming into Being, is a White Earth Nation Anishinaabe author, playwright, poet, and community arts activist.

Jaida Grey Eagle

Resilience

My mother, in 7th grade, ran from a South Dakota boarding school back home to White Earth in an age before Interstate highways, cell phones or google maps. That determination and love of life is resilience.

A Native father sitting in Perkins, after working a late shift, with a two-year-old toddler in a high-chair. Explains that the baby’s mother showed up at his door with a child he didn’t know existed and said, “Here, I’ve done this for two years, I’m done. He’s yours.” He didn’t hesitate to do the right thing. That is resilience.

The woman who lost her child to child protection because she was caught in the cycle of addiction and street life. Sent to prison. Who spent five years getting clean, going to meetings, petitioning the court against all odds to regain custody of her child. That is resilience.

The poet, who grew up with a not-so-easy life in Oklahoma. Resilience gave her words to write, now US poet laureate. Resilience also gave her music in her heart that pours out of her saxophone, healing hearts of listeners.

A Native Artist living on the street collected discarded lipstick and eyeshadow to create gallery-worthy paintings. Creating beauty out of beauty-discards. That is resilience.

My father, along with thousands of other fathers, for more generations than we want to remember, sat alone, not changing residence, waiting, waiting, waiting for children to return. That is resilience.

Men who went to prison—who somehow came out and started businesses, who raised families and took jobs way below their skill level; who became sweat lodge runners, sun dancers and pipe carriers. That is resilience.

The children, raised in families outside the culture, who followed their heart’s spirit back home—facing rejection, ridicule, identity-questioning—but staying, becoming one with the community, one with their tribe. That is resilience.

Mothers—who, with or without shame, have stood in line at Salvation Army for cheap toy giveaways, food shelf lines, who sit in welfare offices again and again because it is one way to keep the family going. That is resilience.

Our relatives who never hesitate to go to war, wars that are never ours. Code talkers, tunnel rats, snipers, those who walk point, medics. They die fighting because that is what we do. Or they come home and hide the pain as best they can and carry flags at Grand Entry. Or not. That is resilience.

People who give more than they get. Mothers who love their children, fathers who stay. Grandparents who babysit, even in a wheelchair.

We create beauty out of scraps. Hold cars together with duct tape. Work jobs and sell beadwork for cash to ‘have a little extra.’ Make frybread even though we know it isn’t good for the diabetes but because it’s good for the spirit.

Resilience is making decisions that benefit the whole instead of just the individual. It is getting up and putting one foot in front of the other, even when you don’t want to. This is our resilience.

JOE DALE TATE NEVAQUAYA

Joe Dale Tate Nevaquaya (Comanche/Yuchi) is a longtime visual artist and poet. His poetry collection Leaving Holes and Selected New Writings won the prestigious Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry in 2012.

Vicki Monks

In the Field

In the field

on the Poet’s

visions of earth that began

their machine romance

our dreams epidemic hearts beat

fueled a little faster.

where in the fossils world they’re released

On a rainy winter day

you dream

of a sense of dislocation

murmuring

secrets of wind like rivers through murky waters—tinted

tealike by

the mangroves

The way you described Geographica Power of Light

archivists of flame

at home among

Silvery ghosts at twilight,

Swim in circles, bump one another, turn, and fly the other way.

Stand still,

Watch rattled windows captures the plume

twenty miles away

Transformed its snow into Night Salt

One language

humming the words

down from the summer

the sprawling river are glorious

color and the season

the vibrancy of the apricot

silhouetted against trees on the surface. Beneath

palette are reflected in the singular

have a textural sensibility

Fires burning

Think of the fall without your interior world

Remembering this gift from the stars

Grows in the sun and mirrored

Surfaces were everywhere

Where form word is “topography”

Ghostly in the gaunt

Shadows on wheat fields

Dwarfed splendor

Architects of the graffiti of isolation

A grist

Glacial calling Incandescent

Fastness of the Frozen archive of

Resonance

Climatic and mysterious

The secret of our Quiet

Oasis in the stone

Rises mushroom in the old

Names of rivers—

1,500 years of winter in the

Heart

Minimal lights, that mumbles saffron

Dwellers

And breathe in the ephemeral

Hungry for a thousand years

Felt

House in mind put on this earth

Surrounded by darkness,

bayous of

bone or teeth are exposed,

(185 miles) north of

Witness

Articulate speech

tumbling down

as a cloth

unwinding marionette lines

protecting

eyes of the weird

pushes out of reservoir

far as the door

indeed

mysteries do lie

alone as the most

of the unknown. Quickly hardened

of heart to it

was extracted

beamed ceilings and latticed

library of pollen

north-pointing

in the light shirt,

to sea in late Nietzsche autumn

Residence at the rainy season

creaks plain black dust

arc of an early

Harp

effects

pied territories

of the morning trench

sands are locked

by the wind

Dark purple

subterranean

pools of rain—

switches to south,

blue accents

in the rest

white pine in a distressed

arabesque horse on the mural. Antique weathervanes

mapped from the air,

restoration hard

sustenance as the night-fields’

spills (left) from a high cirque once

when one is never

filled with glacial ice. From the past new and

discontinued

Summer meltwater

Of Trapridge Glacier and feather quills—were

Natural pauses

Seen in rock

Remote runs the

Days of sieving Sea Smoke

The balance is harmonious

Where we stood went

Glories of the crow’s feet

Still absent were coarse salt

Fine lines

of tobacco and a dab of burnt apricot

blue with accents

of the tea paper on the ceiling of the earliest higher

excavated light

abducted grasping

the Old World made of resin, clocks. Cross the old creek

over the years

loose soil

white ironstone.

intensifies the shimmer

counterpoint

together to glimpse

astonish with stone

of wild back into ceremony

Hence the reasoning

Peering into landscapes in motion are common lunettes with foliate filling

winds, providing winter

scree riding a submerged ice core

and thus winter

glacier’s foot.

In the left ear a silver-colored falconry glove

brings the snow

the seas

with electric thermometers key in a season

of light and form

bask

carved tulips and salmon red music—and breathe deeply

as interior ice presses

home to great blue

Fire & Light Origin

NO‘U REVILLA

No‘u Revilla, author of Permission to Make Digging Sounds, is a queer ‘Ōiwi poet, educator, and aloha ‘āina. She has performed and facilitated workshops throughout Hawai‘i as well as in Canada and Papua New Guinea and at the United Nations. She is proud to have taught poetry at Pu‘uhuluhulu University, a Hawaiian place of learning established at Pu‘uhonua o Pu‘uhuluhulu on Hawai‘i island, while standing with her lāhui, or nation, to protect their sacred mountain Maunakea in the summer of 2019.

Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada

Shapeshifters Banned, Censored, or Otherwise Shit-Listed, aka Chosen Family Poem

The one whose ma‘i was stolen as she slept.

The one who sold everything to live as bite marks.

The one named Mai, Mai, E ‘Ai.

The one raising his scalp like foil from a pan of meat.

You know how many pigs I’ve killed, he asks.

And when he says kill he means it affectionately.

Not I killed pigs to feed my blood but I slept with pigs,

my arms hooked around them.

When you love what you kill.

The one who thinks he knows who stole the ma‘i.

The one with ‘ō‘ō feathers instead of hair. The years it took to catch each

bird and adorn her head in yellow.

The one swallowing a kukui tree for the rest of her life.

The one who became the rest of her life.

The one still searching for the ma‘i.

The one meant to be a locked door but fell in love with the crank of

keys. I’d rather hear that sound and die, she said.

Now all the doors in Kahului stay open.

The one made of open until her drunk mother chased her with a knife

screaming you filthy, you filthy, you filthy fucking broad.

She is the cure to everything that hurts but will never let anyone

touch her again.

The one growing into long, solid sticks to poke at women who, after

kissing another woman for the first time, do not speak for days.

In the grove in Hā‘ō‘ū, they plant their tongues.

The one who slept with the ma‘i first.

The one who slept with the ma‘i last.

The one currently sleeping with the ma‘i because

ma‘i was never stolen.

The one all-remembering, coughing up coconuts as she laughs.

Sometimes they call her grove. Sometimes, Hā‘ō‘ū.

TIFFANY MIDGE

Tiffany Midge is an enrolled citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and was raised in the Pacific Northwest. She is an award-winning poet and writes humor essays, fiction, and memoir. She is the author of the books Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s and The Woman Who Married a Bear.

Jay Dearien

Antiquing with Indians

First it was the tumblers for highballs—

cocktail hour with primitives,

the kind your grandma used to wear her red dress for.

$30 seemed too steep, even for a stereotype,

even for bones, perfect and white, snapped through

afros, pierced through noses, prehistoric as flint.

Still you wanted them, even if you don’t drink

anymore. Then it was the Battle of Little Bighorn

board game, replete with war-bonneted Sioux

and Cheyenne, action figures on horseback;

plastic Gatling guns and cannons,

tomahawks and war shields galore.

But you’re above all that. Except for the beaded Indian

doll, the pin cushion with a wrist clasp—

you want to be that Indian wearing the Indian

like a Russian doll, you want to uncover

and uncover, go undercover and pin yourself

back to completion again; buy the beaded skirt

for those days when Voodoo seems a viable option

(you know the ones). Just as we’d brisked

through the door, the real-life doll version

of Pocahontas and John Smith (what a pair!)

a voice from the back called out . . .  squaw man . . .

later we found the 1906 novel the voice was referring.

Don’t you want to be more than a metaphor?

That’s the beauty of it, that’s the trick,

you think ironies are free, but they’re not.

Latona mentioned how she’d discovered

a Tonto doll, stoic and monosyllabic,

seated next to a Custer puppet

which had so unnerved her she felt it her duty

to relocate Tonto to a more auspicious corner—

someplace safe next to doilies or Fiestaware.

What wars might emerge from such proximity

she’d wondered. What skirmishes could result?

I imagined the Iroquois Brave

brandished on the alfalfa seed cloth sack

could overtake the Yakama Squaw Apple box

succeed his throne beyond the Calumet Baking Powder’s

proud profile. Don’t mess with vintage

the collections seemed to warn. If you think

this is Toy Story, you got another thing coming.

ERIC GANSWORTH

Eric Gansworth, S▼ha-weñ na-saeˀ, is a writer and visual artist, and a citizen of the Onondaga Nation, raised at Tuscarora Nation. His work, including Apple (Skin to the Core), is in fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, painting, and photography, and he has been widely published and shown.

dellas

Angry Red Planet

Released in 1959, a dozen years before Bowie posed the same

question, this movie trailer asked if there is Life on Mars. You

knew it was The Angry Red Planet in question. The Coming Soon

commercial insisted you’d be astounded by “CineMagic.” They refused

to define this Special Effect, but they claimed Martian geography would

seem believable. Even at twelve, you’d been fooled frequently enough

to know CineMagic was a lure, snagging gullible fools to enter movie

theaters again after televisions had invaded most American homes,

glowing cyclops sentinels. The invasion a success, people watched

the Test Pattern for hours, studied the Plains Indian head profile,

perched atop a bullseye, providing brightness and contrast, latitude

and longitude points so programs could beam sharp cathode rays,

delivering convenient defined heroes and their requisite villains.

The commercial did offer glimpses of hostile alien settings and life

forms, so you would witness the heroes’ bravery. A forty-foot-tall

undulating Bat-Rat-Spider-Scorpion hybrid, Martian vermin, attacked

the crew who were only acting in self-defense, risking life and limb.

But beyond the commercial, in full film context, we later understood

the creature was responding to aggressive invaders, who then destroyed

its eyesight with a sub-zero ray-gun beam blast, freezing its alien retinas.

Minutes before, they’d landed on this vibrant distant planet overgrown

in unknown flora. Only the female scientist caught a fleeting glimpse

of intelligent native life. The men doubted her eyes, then decided the whole

crew should leave their ship to explore Mars by destroying life forms. They so

loved their weapons, the Communications Expert crew member literally

gave his gun an affectionate name, kissed its barrel, and posed passionately

for photos, cradling his laser rifle in a lover’s embrace, recorded for posterity.

CineMagic, turns out, was a simple filter, oversaturating contrast and

brightness, reducing nuance, flooding the frame in red ranges. All Mars

scenes glowed crimson. This polarization was designed to hide the film’s

budget, obscure the exotic planet rendered cheaply in shaded drawings.

But instead of the landscape appearing lusher, the Magic merely reduced

humans to malevolent cartoons, chopping and blasting the red planet’s

environment, confidently claiming it as their own, history repeating itself.

By the time they fled for earth, only two survived: predictably the romantic,

flirtatious leads. We’d known them at first sight. The female scientist furtively

dabbed perfume on her pulse points while running tests, and the male captain

inexplicably left his space suit gaping wholly unbuttoned, displaying his hairy

virility for her, so we’d know the other members were expendable, killed to

heighten drama. The male scientist, collapsing frail, weakly got them off

the planet and fainted dead against the gravitational pull of Mars,

blood caressing his lips. Beloved or not, the freeze ray failed

the Communications Expert when he most needed its frigid embrace.

The film is told in flashback. Returning to earth, the surviving scientist

willingly dredged memories to save her secret love, the hairy captain,

now comatose, infected with aggressive Martian life. She must recall:

fainting at the sight of the Red Planet’s indigene; screaming when a native

plant defended itself after she cut it, and the captain’s rescue response, hacking

off its offending limbs; finally remembering how she could defeat his infection.

At twelve, you fall under this spell on TV, Saturday Sci-Fi Theatre, believe

at first that it is about Mars and the future of space travel. Your brother reads

Custer Died for Your Sins, lying beneath his beloved Red Power posters.

He saved enough to buy the family this Color TV, from his job, after years

of high school teachers asking why he wasted time attending classes anyway.

He believed you deserved a sliver of middle-class American luxury, and

in full, polarized CineMagic red, you hear the refrain of Manifest Destiny.

When the explorers land, they invoke the Santa Maria’s ghost and its spectral

companion, the label, “New World.” The crew jokes of Hard Tack and Hot

Coffee, used to technically honor tribal treaties in subsistence terms alone.

The land is quiet (too quiet, of course), and before the female scientist does

her scream and faint routine, the male captain, in casual conversation, a cocky

grin on his face, lets you know exactly what kind of movie you’re watching.

He retrieves his pistol and claims an inheritance, telling his ray-gun-kissing

sidekick some family lore. His grandfather claimed a sixth sense made his ears

twitch if there were Indians around, especially silent, unseen ones, and he caresses

his side arm as if it were his short one. The scientist says if native life exists on this

new world, it should be where they’ve landed, so they strap on and step out into

the polarized, blazing red world, buzzing with aspirations of conquest and supremacy.

In your Rez house, distant dreams of running water dampen by pleasures purchased

in this Color TV. But you could not deny the truth your brother wanted you to see.

Even in the age of rocket-ships and flag-planting on distant planets instead of earthly

land masses, indigenous inhabitants were still cast as obstacles, impediments

to conquer in the name of advancement, and your brother believed the cost of a TV

was worth it. For now you know, finally, that Indians exist beyond the brightness

and contrast of TV Test Patterns, and you are the proof indigenous life survives

and thrives, growing stronger unseen, on the surface of This Angry Red Planet.

SHERWIN BITSUI

Sherwin Bitsui, Diné (Navajo), is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is the author of Shapeshift, Flood Song, and Dissolve. In addition to teaching at the Institute of American Indian Arts, he is a member of the faculty at Northern Arizona University.

Ungelbah Dávila

From Dissolve

Bluing under a dimming North Star,

the Reservation’s ghost

paws cartilage pincered from a digital cloud.

Its gnawed bones’ opaque sigh—

the pallor of bleached wasp eggs,

throbs on tree knobs

penciled in with burnt ivory smell.

Rising out of the uranium pond—

home picks: bird flight

from a cartouche box,

it then becomes a chain of floating islands.

Slipping into free-fall,

we drip-pattern: the somewhere parts,

our shoulders dissolving

in somewhere mud.

The arcing sun whistles

across the mask’s abalone brow,

its blurring pouts into a forest

chirping from a lake’s bite marks

stamped vertically on this map’s windowsill.

Kneeling our thoughts on ellipses

evaporating from ollas of fragrant wet clay—

we saddle the drowning’s slippery rim.

A hovering smear

trailing desert washes

fenced in with a murder of mirrors

illumines the eating groaning over us.

Nibbling blades of winter light:

the goat’s bleating leased downwind

pastures among foals dripping out

of hollowed-out dictionaries.

Jeweled with houseflies,

leather rattles, foil-wrapped,

ferment in beaked masks

on the shores of evaporating lakes.

This plot, now a hotel garden,

its fountain gushing forth—

the slashed wrists of the Colorado.

CEDAR SIGO

Cedar Sigo is a poet and member of the Suquamish Tribe. His books include Stranger in Town, Language Arts, and Royals. He was the Bagley Wright lecturer for 2019 and a book of these lectures, Guard the Mysteries, is forthcoming.

Brian Marr

What did you learn here?
(Old Man House, Suquamish)

How to fall asleep easily on the beach,

to dig clams, to dream a net made of nettles.

A medicine of marsh tea boiled out to the open air,

a memory of cedar bark coiled,

resting for months in cold water

to be fashioned into our so-called lifestyle,

clothes for ceremony

as well as daily life,

canoe bailers,

diapers,

we used the wood for our half-mile longhouse and totems,

dried fish, a hard smoke

wooden oval plates that hooked together

filled with clear oil of salmon,

to wet our palates and smooth our bodies.

A shawl of woolly dog (now extinct)

they were bred on tiny islands

we can still identify,

Tatoosh Island off of Cape Flattery where there were whaling tribes too,

the Makah,

one of whose villages collapsed,

preserved in silt (later unearthed) and how else?

Which other ceremonies or necessary edges of objects?

Our ivory needles, otter pelts, mat creasers, our dances.

What else do you remember dreaming of?

A kind of rake to skim the waves, to catch tiny fish on rows of twisted nails.

LAURA TOHE

Laura Tohe, Diné (Navajo), is Sleepy Rock People clan and born for the Bitter Water People. An award-winning poet and recipient of the 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, she has written four books, including Code Talker Stories; a chapbook; and two librettos for oratorios that were performed in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Rouen and Caen, France.

J. Morgan Edwards

Within Dinétah the People’s
Spirit Remains Strong

These words are for my people, the Diné, who endured colossal hardship and near death and continue to endure

In the people’s memory are the stories

This we remember:

I

Ałkidąą’ adajiní nt’ImagesImages’.

They say long time ago in time immemorial:

the stories say we emerged from

the umbilical center of this sacred earth into the Glittering World

smoothed by Twin Heroes,

sons of White Shell Woman,

who journeyed to find their father

and aided by Spider Woman who taught them

how not to fear the perilous journey.

They say the sun, father to the Twin Heroes,

gave them the knowledge to slay the monsters

so that the world would be safe.

We lived according to the teachings of the Holy People

to dwell within the sacred mountains:

Sisnaajiní rising to the east,

Tsoodził rising to the south,

Dook’o’osłííd rising to the west,

Dibé Nítsaa rising to the north.

We raised our families,

planted our corn,

greeted the dawn with our prayers,

and followed the path of corn pollen.

Every day was a new beginning

 . . .  in Beauty

 . . .  in Beauty.

II

The ancestors predicted it would happen,

that the wind would shift and bring

light-colored men from across the big water

who would shatter our world.

They would arrive wearing metal coats

riding strange beautiful animals,

would arrive in clothes that brushed the earth

carrying crossed sticks to plunge into Dinétah.

In their zealous urge they sought cities of gold.

Later we learned they came to take

our land, our lives, our spirits.

Did they not know we are

all created from the same elements?

Rainclouds for hair,

fingernails formed from beautiful seashells,

the rivers flow through our veins, our lifeline,

from wind we came to life,

with thunder voices we speak.

We fought back to protect ourselves

as we had fought with other enemies.

The world changed when

the light-colored men brought their women.

It was then we knew they meant to stay.

They invented ways to justify what they wanted,

Manifest Destiny, assimilation, colonization.

And, most of all, they wanted the land.

One day a man wearing red clothes appeared.

“Bi’éé’ “Łichii’í, Kit Carson, sent by Wáashindoon.

He brought many soldiers.

They spoke with thunder sticks

that tore into everything that we loved,

to burn our beautiful peach orchards,

to slaughter our sheep in front of us,

to starve us out from Dinétah,

to do unspeakable things to us,

to wrench us from our land.

What strange fruit is this that dangles

from the trees?

We feared for our lives

and hid among the rocks and shadows

gathering food and water when we could.

III

What was our crime?

We wanted only to live as we had

within our sacred mountains

seeking harmony, seeking long life

. . .  in Beauty

. . .  in Beauty.

Others had their death march:

The Trail of Tears, Auschwitz,

The Door of No Return in the House of Slaves.

We are Diné.

We too had our death march forced on us.

When The Long Walk began we witnessed our women murdered and raped

our children and relatives swept away in the rushing currents

of the Rio Grande river.

We heard explosions that silenced mothers giving birth behind the rocks.

We saw the newborn and the elderly left behind.

We saw our warriors unable to defend us.

And even now the land we crossed still holds

the memory of our people’s tears, cries, and blood.

Kit Carson marched us three hundred miles away.

In the distance we saw our sacred mountains

becoming smaller and smaller.

We were torn from the land that held our birth stems.

We were taken to the land that was not us.

We were taken to the desolate place without trees or vegetation

where the men picked out undigested corn from animal dung to eat,

where young women were raped.

We called this place Hwééldi,

this place of starvation,

this place of near death,

this place of extreme hardship.

IV

We returned to our land after four years.

Our spirits ragged and weary.

And vowed that we never be separated from Dinétah;

the earth is our strength.

We have grown strong.

We are the children of White Shell Woman.

We are the people of the original clans she created.

We are female warriors and male warriors—Manuelito, Barboncito

We are the Code Talkers who used our language to help save America.

We are Annie Wauneka who taught us to have faith in the white man’s medicine.

We are the sons and daughters of activists and other unsung heroes

“when Indian men were the finest men there were.”

We are the hands that create fine turquoise and silver jewelry.

We are the women who resisted relocation when the government came with papers

and fences.

We are teachers, cowboys, lawyers, musicians.

We are medicine people, doctors, nurses, college professors.

We are artists, soldiers, politicians, architects, farmers.

We are sheep herders, engineers, singers, comediennes.

We are weavers of baskets and exquisite blankets.

We are bus drivers, welders, ranchers, dishwashers.

We are the people who offer prayers during the cycles of the day.

We are Diné.

In Beauty it was begun.

In Beauty it continues.

In Beauty,

In Beauty,

In Beauty,

In Beauty.

LAYLI LONG SOLDIER

Layli Long Soldier is the author of Whereas. She is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Nancy Nichols

Resolution 2

I

commendthis land

andthisland

honorthisland

NativeImagesthisland

Peoplesthis land

forthisland

thethisland

thousandsthisland

ofthisland

yearsthisland

thatthis land

theythisland

havethisland

stewardedthisland

andthisland

protectedthis landthis landthis landthis landthis landthis landthis

this

LUCI TAPAHONSO

Luci Tapahonso is Diné (Navajo) and grew up in Shiprock, New Mexico. She served as the inaugural Navajo Nation poet laureate (2013–15) and is emerita professor of English literature and languages at the University of New Mexico.

CJ Heatley III

Ilíígo* Naalyéhé:† Goods of Value

Yes, those days are over;

our childhoods were immersed in ílíígo hané‡—

Diné stories and songs that were conveyed with delight, reverence,

or sometimes tears. Hané is always bound with comfort.

When the grown-ups began talking, we paused our loud play and tussling

and squeezed in at the table or settled on the floor nearby.

Our visceral need and appreciation for stories took over

as we absorbed the rhythm, pauses, rises and falls in their voices.

Something inside us urged us to remember, not to forget.

We also knew the exact tone, that slight dip in tenor when we had to leave the room.

It is said that a child’s ears and mind are vulnerable.

They would say, “Nihi ‘áłchíni niłhil a’yóo da’íłí—

we hold our children in much respect.”

Decades later, we share the same stories with our children and grandchildren

this time mixed with English. We sing the same songs.

Our children have learned to listen and to ascertain

whether they could ask questions. In time they, too, grasped the intent,

the underlying resolve in the pauses, smiles, dips and echoes of saad§—

the wisdom of the old words, long prayers, and timeless songs.

The adults who surrounded us in childhood are gone now—iná kaí.

They have left on their journey, but their hané and songs remain.

The prayers, laughter, and songs that guided them into sá¶

—old age—

remain with us.

Áa bił dáhwiłilį ‘ńtęé. It was their saad—verbal properties—

a form of soft goods# that kept them steady.

Saad strengthens our minds and bodies

like a sis łigáaí,** the silver belt that encircles

one’s waist to keep our posture upright.

They used to say, “The Holy Ones will see us coming

at a distance, adorned with stories and jewelry,

and they will murmur, “ ‘Ashi néé, shi awee, my beloved little ones.’ ”

Thus, we honor them by wearing the jewelry they created

and we revere the world they put into place for us:

the mountains, rivers, sky, plants, stars, birds and animals.

‘Éí ‘ałdó’ ílíígo naalyéhé at’e—they, too, have great value.

Like our elders, our hope is that the young ones become diné†† bił da’ílíngi—

persons of virtue—a man who helps when a stranger’s car stalls,

the one who offers the exact words of comfort when needed,

gives a soft hug or holds your hand in silence.

The one who cooks for the grief-stricken

when the hours become a blur and exhaustion hovers at the doorways

and the scents of stew, just-baked bread and coffee linger.

Or the person turns an ordinary day into a jovial gathering

complete with ílíígo hané and chi’yáán łikaní‡‡—

good stories and tasty dishes. The house again fills with

outbursts of delight when relatives arrive.

We trust that the young ones will offer a bed to relatives

who would otherwise sleep curled against cement buildings

or panhandle on street corners—distraught and thin—

beset by chemical cravings our ancestors could not fathom.

They are kin who have veered from their íłįígo hané;

For them, the stories are echoes that can’t be named

like the resonating childhood voices that visit on the coldest nights.

They pawned the family’s hard goods, the íłįígo naalyéhé,

the valuables that were carried about as hané,

the saad at the spiral center of the taut basket

that was created to weave the past into our present and future.

Still, we are grateful for the women who still wear long skirts

and turquoise jewelry as if each day is sacred,

They say, “Shí íłįígo naalyéhé bił naasó naashá do—

I will go forth into the day clothed in my shields.”

They were bestowed with hard goods

at their first laugh dinner. Their parents, too,

always wore a bracelet, earrings or a bolo tie.

They remember the times of crisis when

everyone held each other and prayed

while clasping soft pouches of corn pollen.

Now they carry their childhood offerings

throughout the day as overhead,

the sun’s many-colored horses gallop across the sky.

* Ilíígo: An item or idea that is literally and/or figuratively of great value. It is also used to describe a person who is well respected, someone who is dignified.

† Naalyéhé: An item that one carries about which has significant cultural import; something that is cherished and has heft.

‡ Hané: Stories that are told and retold over generations.

§ Saad: Songs, prayers, and stories that comprise traditional knowledge and wisdom.

¶ Sá: Old age; an elder who has acquired valuable knowledge throughout his or her long life.

# Soft goods: Refers to items that are pliable such as fabric and blankets as well as intangible gifts such as stories, words of encouragement, and teachings. Hard goods refer to material items such as jewelry, firewood, and tools.

** Sis łigáaí: A handmade belt made of silver (łigáaí means white) and turquoise stones; commonly known as a concha belt.

†† Diné: A Navajo man (singular) or the Navajo people.

‡‡ Chi’yáán łikaní: Tasty dishes; memorable meals.

NATALIE DIAZ

Natalie Diaz, author most recently of Postcolonial Love Poem, was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village. She is Mojave, Akimel O’otham, and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community.

Arizona State University

Postcolonial Love Poem

I’ve been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite,

can stop the bleeding—most people forgot this

when the war ended. The war ended

depending on which war you mean: those we started,

before those, millennia ago and onward,

those which started me, which I lost and won—

these ever-blooming wounds.

I was built by wage. So I wage Love and worse—

always another campaign to march across

a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin

settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast.

I dismount my dark horse, bend to you there, deliver you

the hard pull of all my thirsts—

I learned Drink in a country of drought.

We pleasure to hurt, leave marks

the size of stones—each a cabochon polished

by our mouths. I, your lapidary, your lapidary wheel

turning—green mottled red—

the jaspers of our desires.

There are wildflowers in my desert

which take up to twenty years to bloom.

The seeds sleep like geodes beneath hot feldspar sand

until a flash flood bolts the arroyo, lifting them

in its copper current, opens them with memory—

they remember what their god whispered

into their ribs: Wake up and ache for your life.

Where your hands have been are diamonds

on my shoulders, down my back, thighs—

I am your culebra.

I am in the dirt for you.

Your hips are quartz-light and dangerous,

two rose-horned rams ascending a soft desert wash

before the November sky unyokes a hundred-year flood—

the desert returned suddenly to its ancient sea.

Arise the wild heliotrope, scorpion weed,

blue phacelia which hold purple the way a throat can hold

the shape of any great hand—

Great hands is what she called mine.

The rain will eventually come, or not.

Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds—

The war never ended and somehow begins again.

Acknowledgments

I express gratitude for the opportunity to share these poems. This project includes forty-seven contemporary Native Nations poets, a sampling from many who write poetry in these times. I remain thankful for their inspiration and for their teachers, including their poetry ancestors, which include American and world poets back to the beginning. I especially wish to acknowledge the Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday, who remains a respected elder of contemporary Native Nations poetry and has inspired and influenced all of us.

There would be no anthology without the Living Nations, Living Words project, and there would be no such project without the staff of the Library of Congress. I have worked closely with Literary Initiatives staff; they are insightful, creative, inspirational, and they assisted in every detail to bring this vision forward. The Geography and Map Division staff worked diligently to help us realize the web map from which the poets emerge. The American Folklife Center staff assembled the poems, recordings, transcripts, and photographs into a permanent collection of Native Nations poets. The Publishing Office staff helped see the project through with their meticulous feedback and direction on the anthology. Literary Director Marie Arana believed in and supported the vision of the project and the book. At the helm is the inspirational Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden. This collection is evidence of her management, her hard work, and her goodwill. I must add a special acknowledgement of Rob Casper and Anne Holmes, who saw to the care of this project from the beginning.

My editor at W. W. Norton, Jill Bialosky, has been with me through most of my literary path. I am most grateful to her belief and her direction. I also wish to acknowledge her assistant, Drew Elizabeth Weitman, who has seen us through this anthology and has shepherded me through many other projects. I am grateful for my assistant, Jennifer Elise Foerster, who is the best partner in literary accomplishment anyone could have by their side.

And always, gratitude for this earth and the gifts of this earth, including trees for paper, the materials for ink, which leads us to the sun and the rain and the singers of plants. And to all those who have seen and will see this publication from the roots of an idea to the completion of a map, to this anthology, which includes the copyeditors, printers, bookmakers, drivers, and others who get this collection into your hands and your ears.

Mvto, which is “thank you” in the Mvskoke language.

Credits

b: william bearhart, “Transplant: After Georgia O’Keeffe’s Pelvis IV, 1944” first published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, volume 2, issue 4 (December 2015). Copyright © by b: william bearhart. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Thomas Lindfors, courtesy of the author.

Sherwin Bitsui, [“Bluing under a dimming North Star,”] from Dissolve. Copyright © 2018 by Sherwin Bitsui. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. Photo courtesy of photographer Ungelbah Dávila.

Kimberly Blaeser, “Poem on Disappearance.” Copyright © by Kimberly Blaeser. Photo by John Fisher, courtesy of the author.

Heather Cahoon, “Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman” from Horsefly Dress by Heather Cahoon. Copyright © 2020 by Heather Cahoon. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press. Photo courtesy of the author.

Laura Da’, “The Rhetorical Feminine” first published in The Rumpus (April 2020). Copyright © by Laura Da’. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Jarrod Da’, courtesy of the author.

Natalie Diaz, “Postcolonial Love Poem” from Postcolonial Love Poem. Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Diaz. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, graywolfpress.org. Photo by Arizona State University, courtesy of the author.

Anita Endrezze, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Indian” from Enigma (Press 53, 2019). Copyright © by Anita Endrezze. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Maja Hansen, courtesy of the author.

Heid E. Erdrich, “Peacemaking” from Little Big Bully by Heid E. Erdrich. Copyright © by Heid E. Erdrich. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy of photographer Chris Felver.

Louise Erdrich, “Advice to Myself” from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems by Louise Erdrich. Copyright © 2003 by Louise Erdrich. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Photo by Hilary Abe, courtesy of the author.

Jennifer Elise Foerster, “Notes from Coosa” first published in the Georgia Review (Spring 2020). Copyright © by Jennifer Elise Foerster. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of photographer Richard Bluecloud Castaneda.

Eric Gansworth, “Angry Red Planet.” Copyright © by Eric Gansworth. Photo by dellas, courtesy of the author.

Joy Harjo, “Exile of Memory” from An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 2019 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Photo by Shawn Miller, Library of Congress.

Suzan Shown Harjo, “Welcoming Home Living Beings.” Copyright © by Suzan Shown Harjo. Photo courtesy of photographer Lucy Fowler Williams, Penn Museum.

Gordon Henry Jr., “River People—The Lost Watch” from The Failure of Certain Charms and Other Disparate Signs of Life (Salt Publishing, 2007). Copyright © by Gordon Henry Jr. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of the author.

Roberta Hill, “These Rivers Remember” from Cicadas: New and Selected Poems (Holy Cow! Press, 2013). Copyright © by Roberta Hill. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of photographer Clint Thayer, Focal Flame Photography.

Sy Hoahwah, “Hell’s Acre” from Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride by Sy Hoahwah (University of New Mexico Press, 2021). Copyright © 2021 by Sy Hoahwah. Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press. Photo by Isis Hoahwah, courtesy of the author.

LeAnne Howe, “1918 Union Valley Road Oklahoma.” Copyright © by LeAnne Howe. Photo by Daniel McCreary, courtesy of the author.

Alex Jacobs, “Trudell” from This Is a Terrorist Act (Flint Productions, 2013). Copyright © by Alex Jacobs. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of the author.

Imaikalani Kalahele, “Maoli.” Copyright © by Imaikalani Kalahele. Photo by Kealiikauila Niheu, courtesy of the author.

Joan Naviyuk Kane, “Rookeries.” Copyright © by Joan Naviyuk Kane. Photo by Jenny Irene Miller, courtesy of the author.

Layli Long Soldier, “Resolution 2” from Whereas. Copyright © 2017 by Layli Long Soldier. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, graywolfpress.org. Photo by Nancy Nichols, courtesy of the author.

Brandy Nālani McDougall, “This Island on which I Love You” first published in New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdrich (Graywolf Press, 2018). Copyright © by Brandy Nālani McDougall. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Craig Santos Perez, courtesy of the author.

Tiffany Midge, “Antiquing with Indians” from The Woman Who Married a Bear, by Tiffany Midge. (University of New Mexico Press, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Tiffany Midge. Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press. Photo by Jay Dearien, courtesy of the author.

Deborah A. Miranda, “Indigenous Physics: The Element Colonizatium” first published in American Indian Culture and Research Journal volume 42, issue 2 (2018). Copyright © by Deborah A. Miranda. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of photographer Kevin Remington.

Joe Dale Tate Nevaquaya, “In the Field.” Copyright © by Joe Dale Tate Nevaquaya. Photo by Vicki Monks, courtesy of the author.

Duane Niatum, “Old Humptulips” from Earth Vowels (Mongrel Empire Press, 2017). Copyright © by Duane Niatum. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Marti Spencer, courtesy of the author.

nila northSun, “I gotta be Indian tomorrow” from love at gunpoint (R. L. Crow Publications, 2007). Copyright © by nila northSun. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of R. L. Crow Publications.

Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen, “Tiimiaq, something carried,” from Roughly for the North (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2018), 58–60, uapress.alaska.edu. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of the author.

Elise Paschen, “ Heritage, X” first published in the Massachusetts Review, volume 61, issue 4 (Winter 2020). Copyright © by Elise Paschen. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Jennifer Girard, courtesy of the author.

Craig Santos Perez, “Off-Island CHamorus” first published in Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience, edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond (Triangle Square, 2019). Copyright © by Craig Santos Perez. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Hannah Ensor, courtesy of the author.

Mahealani Perez-Wendt, “Na Wai Eā, The Freed Waters.” Copyright © by Mahealani Perez-Wendt. Photo by Kaehukai Broadhurst, courtesy of the author.

Henry Real Bird, “Thought” from Horse Tracks (Lost Horse Press, 2010). Copyright © by Henry Real Bird. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of photographer Kevin Martini-Fuller.

Marcie Rendon, “Resilience.” Copyright © by Marcie Rendon. Photo by Jaida Grey Eagle, courtesy of the author.

No‘u Revilla, “Shapeshifters Banned, Censored, or Otherwise Shit-Listed, aka Chosen Family Poem.” Copyright © by No‘u Revilla. Photo by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, courtesy of the author.

Cathy Tagnak Rexford, “Anchorage, 1989.” Copyright © by Cathy Tagnak Rexford. Photo by Nadya Kwandibens, Red Works Photography, courtesy of the author.

Kim Shuck, “This River Runs” from Sidewalk Ndn (FootHills Publishing, 2014). Copyright © by Kim Shuck. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo © 2019 Douglas A. Salin, www.dougsalin.com.

Cedar Sigo, “What did you learn here? (Old Man House, Suquamish).” Copyright © by Cedar Sigo. Photo by Brian Marr, courtesy of the author.

Jake Skeets, “Daybreak.” Copyright © by Jake Skeets. Photo by Quanah Yazzie, courtesy of the author.

M. L. Smoker, “The Book of the Missing, Murdered and Indigenous—Chapter 1.” Copyright © by M. L. Smoker. Photo by Dean Davis, courtesy of the author.

Denise Sweet, “Palominos Near Tuba City” from Palominos Near Tuba City (Holy Cow! Press, 2018). Copyright © by Denise Sweet. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Kara Counard, courtesy of the author.

Lehua M. Taitano, “Current, I” first published in Arc Poetry Magazine 87 (Winter 2018). Copyright © by Lehua M. Taitano. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo courtesy of the author.

Luci Tapahonso, “Ilíígo Naalyéhé: Goods of Value.” Copyright © by Luci Tapahonso. Photo by C. J. Heatley III, courtesy of the author.

Laura Tohe, “Within Dinétah the People’s Spirit Remains Strong” first published in Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics, edited by Anthony K. Webster (University of New Mexico Press, 2009). Copyright © by Laura Tohe. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by J. Morgan Edwards, courtesy of the author.

Tanaya Winder, “like any good indian woman” first published in World Literature Today (May 2017). Copyright © by Tanaya Winder. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Viki Eagle, courtesy of the author.

Elizabeth Woody, “Coquille.” Copyright © by Elizabeth Woody. Photo by Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), courtesy of the author.

Ray Young Bear, “ Wichihaka/The One I Live With” from Manifestation Wolverine: The Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear (Open Road Media, 2015). Copyright © by Ray Young Bear. Reprinted with the permission of the author. Photo by Stella Lasley-Young Bear, courtesy of the author.

Ofelia Zepeda, “B ‘o E-a:g maṣ ‘ab Him g Ju:kĭ/It is Going to Rain” from the bilingual audio CD chapbook Jewe ḍ ‘ I - hoi /Earth Movements (Kore Press, 1997). Copyright © by Ofelia Zepeda. Reprinted with the permission of Kore Press. korepress.org. Photo by Tony Celentano, courtesy of the author.

Index

Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

abíní hoolzish 4

Advice to Myself 109

All his life loving earth 137

All men knew a secret of the northern part 125

Among twenty Indians only one 91

Anchorage, 1989 66

And now, that look on your face: 66

And when, on this island on which 99

Angry Red Planet 182

Antiquing with Indians 179

Baby Out of Cut-Open Woman 35

bearhart, william b: 162

Beginning with our continent, draw 1491: 134

Bitsui, Sherwin 186

Blaeser, Kimberly 133

Bluing under a dimming North Star, 187

B ‘o E-a:g maṣ ‘ab Him g Ju:kĭ 7

B ‘o ‘e-a:g maṣ. ‘ab him g ju:kĭ. 7

Book of the Missing, Murdered and Indigenous—Chapter 1, The 128

Cahoon, Heather 34

Consider: we are made almost entirely of water and electricity. 51

Coquille 32

Current, I 51

Da’, Laura 47

Daybreak 4

Diaz, Natalie 208

Do not return, 72

Endrezze, Anita 90

Erdrich, Heid E. 111

Erdrich, Louise 108

Exile of Memory 72

First it was the tumblers for highballs— 179

Foerster, Jennifer Elise 37

From Dissolve 187

Gansworth, Eric 181

Gliding from the confluence of Battery Rock 48

Harjo, Joy 71

Harjo, Suzan Shown 17

Hell’s Acre 118

Henry, Gordon Jr. 81

Heritage , X 12

Hill, Roberta 62

Hoahwah, Sy 117

How to fall asleep easily on the beach, 191

Howe, LeAnne 39

i came back to Nevada 96

I commend this land 201

I find you nowhere that is here or there. 38

i gotta be Indian tomorrow 96

I know, I know, I been there 160

Ilíígo Naalyéhé: Goods of Value 204

in a book 103

Indigenous Physics: The Element Colonizatium 25

In the beginning there was a voice 10

In the desert of burning dreams, of armadillo and centipede, 107

In the Field 169

In the field 169

In the people’s memory are the stories 194

In these rivers, on these lakes 63

In the spirit of seawater, 89

i pull my brothers from words, stupid injun, shot like bullets. when people 131

It is Going to Rain 8

I’ve been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite, 209

Jacobs, Alex 159

Kalahele, Imaikalani 9

Kane, Joan Naviyuk 124

Kemekoteweni—wewenetwi 22

Last person doctored on Hell’s Acre, 118

Leave the dishes. 109

like any good indian woman 131

Like a sheep horn, brown and rustic, the canoe pitches to one side—takes water. 32

Long Soldier, Layli 200

Maoli 10

Maybe it was while reading the 1918 Union Valley Bulletin 40

McDougall, Brandy Nālani 98

Midge, Tiffany 178

Miranda, Deborah A. 24

My family migrated to California when I was 15 years old. 15

My mother, in 7th grade, ran from a South Dakota boarding school 166

Na Wai Eā, The Freed Waters 137

Nevaquaya, Joe Dale Tate 168

Niatum, Duane 88

1918 Union Valley Road Oklahoma 40

northSun, nila 95

Notes from Coosa 38

Off-Island CHamorus 15

Ojanen, Carrie Ayagaduk 102

Old Humptulips 89

One I Live With, The 23

Palominos Near Tuba City 107

Paschen, Elise 11

Peacemaking 112

Perez, Craig Santos 14

Perez-Wendt, Mahealani 136

Poem on Disappearance 134

Postcolonial Love Poem 209

Real Bird, Henry 115

Released in 1959, a dozen years before Bowie posed the same 182

Rendon, Marcie 165

Resilience 166

Resolution 2 201

Revilla, No‘u 175

Rexford, Cathy Tagnak 65

Rhetorical Feminine, The 48

River People—The Lost Watch 82

Rookeries 125

Runs west and 158

Shapeshifters Banned, Censored, or Otherwise Shit-Listed, aka Chosen Family Poem 176

Shuck, Kim 157

Sigo, Cedar 190

Skeets, Jake 3

Smoker, M. L. 127

so-called because he was sckwełťelénč, “cut out of the stomach” 35

Someone said it is going to rain. 8

Sweet, Denise 106

Taitano, Lehua M. 50

Tapahonso, Luci 203

The elimination of a substance from a living organism 25

The one whose ma‘i was stolen as she slept. 176

These Rivers Remember 63

The winding cord of highways, unkempt 128

The year my mother was born 12

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Indian 91

This Island on which I Love You 99

This River 158

Thought 116

“Thought is like a cloud 116

Tiimiaq, something carried, 103

Today, we welcome home beloved Living Beings 18

Tohe, Laura 193

Transplant: After Georgia O’Keeffe’s Pelvis IV , 1944 163

Trudell 160

Welcoming Home Living Beings 18

We long ago made a peace—a treaty— 112

What did you learn here? (Old Man House, Suquamish) 191

When we were river people 82

Wichihaka 22

Winder, Tanaya 130

Within Dinétah the People’s Spirit Remains Strong 194

Wolves have two stomachs, I only have one 163

Woody, Elizabeth 31

Yes, those days are over; 204

Young Bear, Ray 21

Your traditional dance dress is beautiful. 23

Zepeda, Ofelia 6

ALSO BY JOY HARJO

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through:
A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry
(editor, with LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and contributing editors)

An American Sunrise

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

Crazy Brave: A Memoir

Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo
(with Tanaya Winder)

For a Girl Becoming

She Had Some Horses

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, 1975 – 2001

A Map to the Next World

The Good Luck Cat

Reinventing the Enemy’s Language:
Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America
(coeditor, with Gloria Bird)

The Spiral of Memory: Interviews
(edited by Laura Cotelli)

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

In Mad Love and War

Secrets from the Center of the World
(with photographs by Stephen Strom)

What Moon Drove Me to This?

The Last Song

MUSIC ALBUMS

Red Dreams: A Trail Beyond Tears

Winding Through the Milky Way

She Had Some Horses

Native Joy for Real

Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century

PLAYS

We Were There When Jazz Was Invented

Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light

Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all the copyright notices, pages 213–17 constitute an extension of the copyright page.

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Cover design: Sarahmay Wilkinson

Cover image: Library of Congress

Photograph by Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

Book design by Chris Welch

Production manager: Julia Druskin

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Harjo, Joy, editor. | Hayden, Carla Diane, 1952– writer of foreword. | Library of Congress, issuing body.

Title: Living nations, living words : an anthology of first peoples poetry / collected and with an introduction by Joy Harjo, 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate ; foreword by Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress.

Description: First edition. |
New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2021] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005778 | ISBN 9780393867916 (paperback) | ISBN 9780393867923 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—Indian authors. | American poetry—21st century. | Indians of North America—Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS591.I55 L56 2021 | DDC 811.008/0897—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005778

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