Poems

War

In my body flows the blood of Gallic

Bastille stormers and the soft, gentle

ways of Salish/Cree womanhood.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

after a one-night stand with Myself i ask Myself to stay the night

i know she wants me

by her side in sleep. i do not really          ask          her to stay,

only imply she is invited. i speak

Top

After learning “me” and “I”

but well before my father learns

a restraining order's

between him and our home,

we share some good times.

Remember the back of his bicycle.

Full Metal Oji-Cree

this is the transsensorium

there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier

& winning finally

the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern

wintermute, tessier-ashpool, armitage

Trillium

the animal in me

is constant.

thirst starts,

hunger answers.

sleep is uncertain,

restless limbs.

in the night,

I hear footsteps.

Salmon Courage

Here at Woodlands, Moriah, 

these thirty-five years later, 

still I could smell her fear. 

Ae Fond Kiss

Tune: Rory Dall’s Port

First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;                          …

Wet Market

From youth I was taught that fresh meant alive

until the moment you buy it                                   My mother

Lake Baptiste Ungenders Me

upon contact / head first / baptismal

the rind of me / peels into ribbons

of foam / and pearls / i re-brown at the water’s

touch / its two-way mudmirror / hands me

its own name / earthliquid / bottomless

My Poem Without Me in It

My poem without me in it—would it be like

my room when I had returned to it

after my mother was done with me.

Under my bed, only the outer

space balls, of dust, only

the asteroids of hair, no bent-legs

My Last Duchess

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands

An English Speaking Doctor Translates the Concerns of his Patient with Google/Un Docteur Anglophone Traduit Les Inquiétudes De Son Patient Avec Google

écoute

à quoi bon être poète

beau dire

ce mal

semble dans la tête comme

marteau feu enclume clou couteau

ou l’éclat d’une baudroie ou des

aurores boréales

The Dead

How great unto the living seem the dead!

How sacred, solemn; how heroic grown;

How vast and vague, as they obscurely tread

Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki 

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words,

Please Write a Poetry Book in Syllabics¹

i want to complicate the term sacred, she told me

to make holy

sacerdotal: priestly

sākris: to make a treaty

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Letters

I threw away your letters.

Years ago, just like that.

The tight black swirls,

circles and strokes

filling fine sheets —

I would not see them again.

The last items I had left.

Claim Laid

This is a prayer for the dead and dying - 

and those that may never know a life on the outside

I hope your sins don’t meet you at your grave - 

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

Mariah according to my yt mama

when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like

to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies

in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s

she tells me in a so-there tone

Fear of Snakes

The snake can separate itself

from its shadow, move on ribbons of light,

taste the air, the morning and the evening,

Paying Attention

He is not doing well. She is not

Dear Dolphin

The shaman at Broadway and Main

with a plastic shaker and some sage

says you’re my power animal. Says

we both have big brains, like to chatter.

With the Dying of the Light

I recited to him,

                      Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!

How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!

For me wilt thou renew the withered rose,

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

Moon of the Returning Sun

A view from two sides of Polaris, it is said:

Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

From World of Made and Unmade

In my dream my mother comes with me.

We are in the meadows we call

The Flats, walking the dogs.

Walk straight past the water trough,

she says, do not engage the moss.

asked what has changed

Even staring out the window is changed,

the private peak above it all brought down

with the erosion of the poise between

the viewable and the mused unseen.

Dissolution so nearly changeless as not

Family Affair

they say we are a family that is good at death / i make a decision to hold

a seminar on how to live / i schedule this party for my uncles on the first

day of spring / my dead uncles play hooky with the afterlife

Children Listen

                    It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world

The Days of the Unicorns

 I remember when the unicorns

roved in herds through the meadow

behind the cabin, and how they would

School for the Deaf

You gasp, awakened by

a bucket of cold water.

A gauzy autumn morning. A drained sunrise.

You shiver, strain to see the house

parent’s fingers whipping & flicking in

Embarrased

i thought it was ok - i could understand the reasons

they said there might be young children or a nervous man seeing

this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting