River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal

By Rain Prud’homme-Cranford (Goméz), Ph.D

These are things I need to say:
but language and words
were ripped from my tongue
Residential school
Jim Crow feather

soldiers swarming
our land our homes
uprooting us from soil—
roots dangling
string fingers
clinging to clutch
clumps of Earth

These are things I need to say:
but mouth is dry
arid fragile skin
opens bleeding
hollow space between
tongue and teeth cracks
from drought
from poison water

These are things I need to say:
ancestors circle round
pepper spraying police
choking our
relatives’ throats—
reaching to hold water
slipping through fingers
toes digging into
brown dirt

These are things
we need to say—
Sing us home
shatter violent silence
come down rain
churning rivers
ocean waves

We ride a tempest of
surging water

#WaterIsLife #RezspectOurLandbase #StandingRock

©Rain Prud’homme-Cranford 2016

Rain Prud’homme-Cranford (Goméz), Ph.D., is a“FatTastic IndigeNerd,” an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Literature in the Department of English and Affiliated Faculty in the International Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Calgary. A Poetry Editor for Mongrel Empire Press (MEP) and an Editorial Board member for The Journal of Louisiana Creole Studies.

Rain won the First Book Award in Poetry from NWCA (2009), for Smoked Mullet Cornbread Crawdad Memory (MEP 2012). Critical and creative work can be found in various journals including: The Southern Literary Journal, Louisiana Folklife, Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond (LSU P), Mississippi Quarterly, Tidal Basin Review, Sing: Indigenous Poetry of the Americas, As Us, Yellow Medicine Review, and many others.

By César Love

I seek escape, not in smoke

Not in drink

But in rocks I’ve gathered

None are boulders, few are pebbles

The perfect mass gorges my two hands

Hardness is my comfort, density my high.

The Black One brings me to outer space

The Purple, a utopian palace

The Orange, a feast devoured slowly

The Grey, a ferry to oblivion

My comedown is softness

Reality, a sinkhole in feathers

Below my pillow

I keep an opal

Always the Land

When the storms end, he is quiet to all but the deaf

Many hear the whispers of streams, the mumbles of rivers

But below the threshold of a lapping pond

There are sounds as soft as a tadpole’s heartbeat

At volumes quieter than grass

The land delivers a wordless sermon

You are free to leave before the end, for the sermon has no end

Can you bear the spastic stillness?

If you can listen for ten minutes, you are free to ask a question.

If you can listen for an hour, you can ask for anything you need.

Ask what about your bees?

The trellis on your porch, broken by the eight-foot weeds

It’s painted and repaired, ready for the blossoms

To greet the sun and moon, ready for the blossoms

To welcome back the bees.

Listen to the honey spinning into gold

Ask what about the blackout?

Remember the fireflies you caught so long ago?

You hid them in a basement jar.

Realize you’re one of them.

Hands unlock the lid, hands let all of you free.

Listen to the land echoing your glow

Lake Chabot

Castro Valley, California

Blue water, mirror of day

Show us the breadth of the sky

Dark water, mirror of night

How lovely the moon on your throat

Sweet water, ripples and tides

Ladles of kisses

The brush of your tongue moistens our clay

Deep water, so certain the currents

Sleepless their movement

Sleepless your will

Still water, gentle the splashes

So peaceful your power

So quiet creation

The Sprinklers

Surprised on sunny park grass

The intrusion of sprinkler water

Hidden fountains meant for moonlight

Let loose by mistimed dials

An accidental shower

Perhaps you scamper from the grass

Safe and only a little wet

Perhaps they give you a hearty splash

Soaked or dry

Savor the wet sparklers

The cool of deepsome wells

This is not the Alhambra

This is not Niagara

Small rainbows

The rise and fall of water drops

An arc of musical notes

Spiring to the sky

In love enough

To fall to Earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: César Love writes poems about displacement and the search for home. He can be found at open mics of the San Francisco Bay Area. His new book of poems is titled Birthright.
http://cesarlovepoetry.yolasite.com/

Loosening Our Tongue

Rock Collection

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