Black Molasses
by Cesar Love
Light cannot pass through me
I swallow every spark
I put out each candle
I smother the streetlamp
I douse the lighthouse
The moon, the sun, and the day
Down they go in my distillery
Everything bright milled by my night
There I make them black like me
There I make them pure like me
When I am ready, I make the world sweet
Give me flour, I make gingerbread
Give me water, I become rum
Give me an audience, I become music
I am black molasses
I go the speed that I choose
They say I move slow, but really I move free
In this sugar, you meet freedom
In this, sugar, you become four-alarm cool
The bongo of minutes, the gong of the hours,
Simple flickers on the still of your soul
"Black Molasses" was previously published in Birthright by Cesar Love
© Cesar Love. All rights reserved.
Cheekbones
The handsome Native
His cheekbones are not chiseled
He is not made of granite
He is not made of marble
The handsome Native
His cheekbones are flesh and bone
They have felt hurricanes
They have met tornadoes
The handsome Native
His face fathoms all weather
He has withstood hatred
He has withstood other small winds
© Cesar Love. All rights reserved.
Cesar Love is a Latino poet influenced by the Asian masters. A resident of San Francisco's Mission District, he is also an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. His latest book is titled Birthright. His previous book While Bees Sleep was published by CC. Marimbo Press. cesarlovepoetry.yolasite.com
Trouble Song
by Kim Shuck
Take hold of your stubborn
Twine fingers in your defiant
Dig in
Breathe deep into your
Creative
Make space for your heartbreak but let it start healing
We were walked from the east
We were packed into ships
We were sold by our families
We were illegal
We were hunted
We are here
We are always
We are
Aways
Sing that restless patience
Our inheritance
Take hold of hands
Take hold of your stubborn
Take hold
Take care
Take caring
Self brightly
Group with care
Hold tight and sing
Twine fingers in your defiant
Dig in
Breathe deep into your
Creative
Make space for your heartbreak but let it start healing
We were walked from the east
We were packed into ships
We were sold by our families
We were illegal
We were hunted
We are here
We are always
We are
Aways
Sing that restless patience
Our inheritance
Take hold of hands
Take hold of your stubborn
Take hold
Take care
Take caring
Self brightly
Group with care
Hold tight and sing
© Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kim Shuck is feeling very scattered these days among the Executive Orders and banishments. She teaches 2nd graders most Thursdays, 4th graders some Wednesdays and college undergrads on Fridays. At other times she tries to reweave the fraying webs of communities that she loves. As for poetic qualifications… magazines, anthologies, solo books awards… degrees… years of working in the poetry mine. In 2017 Shuck was appointed to serve as San Francisco's next Poet Laureate. www.kimshuck.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kim Shuck is feeling very scattered these days among the Executive Orders and banishments. She teaches 2nd graders most Thursdays, 4th graders some Wednesdays and college undergrads on Fridays. At other times she tries to reweave the fraying webs of communities that she loves. As for poetic qualifications… magazines, anthologies, solo books awards… degrees… years of working in the poetry mine. In 2017 Shuck was appointed to serve as San Francisco's next Poet Laureate. www.kimshuck.com
Archive | Author
Kim Shuck
Loosening Our Tongue
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
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
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
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
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 need to say—
Sing us home
shatter violent silence
come down rain
churning rivers
ocean waves
We ride a tempest of
surging water
surging water
#WaterIsLife #RezspectOurLandbase #StandingRock
©Rain Prud’homme-Cranford 2016
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.
Archive | Author
Rain Prud'homme-Cranford
Rock Collection
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.
© César
Love. All rights reserved.
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/
http://cesarlovepoetry.yolasite.com/
Archive | Author
César Love
Once Upon A River
By Tiffany Midge
We were the kids trading marbles and penny candy at the Friday night Grange Hall meetings. We were the deaf shopkeeper at McDougals who said the comics would set ya back two bits, and the digests two bits and a George Washington. We were the Pillager kids from your dad’s class who had you over for supper, who horrified your mom when Mrs. Pillager wiped the rain off her hounds with a dishcloth, then covered the fried chicken with the same cloth.
We were the voices of the evening church bells chiming every sunset and the Rutherford sisters who graciously invited you into their doily-drenched parlor for hot water and honey and taught you how to play Hearts.
We were the hippie mom of the kid you played with, who stored the umbilical cords of her children in the back of the freezer, and the waitress at the Silver Spoon who dished you free bowls of vanilla ice cream on slow nights. We were the man who convinced you he was going to commandeer a raft all the way to Hawaii and who you swear you saw on the TV news, safe and triumphant after he’d mysteriously left town.
We were the junkyard dog next door whose owner was jaundiced and sported a hook for a hand, and the Davenquist boy who you traded your Girl Scout Mints for a litter of baby mice that all died because the house was too cold at night, so your dad replaced them with tropical fish.
We were the general store where you ran to fetch the mail every afternoon from Box 70 and spent your ten cent weekly allowance on a candy bar, and the girl named Rudy whose newborn sister had pierced ears and whose dad smoked from a hookah pipe, and Brian Osterday who was your perfect first love and who had a brother named Royal, the name of your orange cat.
We were the Snoqualmie Bull’s Saturday baseball games your dad coached and the fat catcher named Moose who later died from a broken leg. We were Brownie meetings in the basement of the library across the street.
We were the occasional shrieking of the firehouse alarm alerting your dad, in the volunteer squad to run up the block and help save distressed babies or car engine fires, and we were creek crawdads and guppies and the steady stream of bull fish hooked from the banks of the Snoqualmie River.
We were the long days that existed solely for the pleasures of swimming in the lagoons of that river, and the sandbar where some fishermen gave you your first can of beer and where you traced pictures in the sand and buried costume jewelry and brooches stolen from your mother’s dresser.
We were the sticker bushes alongside the banks where you harvested quarts of blackberries and traded to Mrs. Higgenbottom who made you a blue pie.
We were Mary Chesum whose parents were Yakima Indians and we were the Friday night when she was abducted from the house she was babysitting at, taken to the river where she was alternately chased, then stabbed, and chased again, repeatedly—her blood and clothing spilling across the lengths of the rocky bank—by a high school senior who she’d been refusing to date.
We were Mary Chesum’s younger sister Lisa, your friend, your classmate. You were the only two Indian girls in school, the only ones with that long black hair that wrapped around your shoulders like shawls. The only two girls who knew they were different, who knew they’d be singled out; girls who paired up for safety and refuge, for shelter; ones who knew how to flee to the banks of the river, instinctually, by memory.
We were there, that day on the playground when your shoelace had broken and Lisa without hesitation unbraided her lace and gave it to you.
We watched as she bent over and threaded the lace into the grommets of your shoe, then went for the remainder of the day with her one shoe loose and undressed.
Copyright © Tiffany Midge. All rights reserved.
Once Upon A River appeared in “Native Literatures: Generations," 2010.
Tiffany Midge’s book “Outlaws, Renegades and Saints, Diary of a Mixed-up Halfbreed” won the Diane Decorah Poetry Award. She’s most recently been published in North American Review, The Raven Chronicles, Florida Review and the online journal No Tell Motel. An enrolled Standing Rock Sioux and MFA grad from University of Idaho she lives in Moscow, Idaho (Nez Perce country) and teaches part time with Northwest Indian College.
https://tiffanymidge.wixsite.com/website
We were the kids trading marbles and penny candy at the Friday night Grange Hall meetings. We were the deaf shopkeeper at McDougals who said the comics would set ya back two bits, and the digests two bits and a George Washington. We were the Pillager kids from your dad’s class who had you over for supper, who horrified your mom when Mrs. Pillager wiped the rain off her hounds with a dishcloth, then covered the fried chicken with the same cloth.
We were the voices of the evening church bells chiming every sunset and the Rutherford sisters who graciously invited you into their doily-drenched parlor for hot water and honey and taught you how to play Hearts.
We were the hippie mom of the kid you played with, who stored the umbilical cords of her children in the back of the freezer, and the waitress at the Silver Spoon who dished you free bowls of vanilla ice cream on slow nights. We were the man who convinced you he was going to commandeer a raft all the way to Hawaii and who you swear you saw on the TV news, safe and triumphant after he’d mysteriously left town.
We were the junkyard dog next door whose owner was jaundiced and sported a hook for a hand, and the Davenquist boy who you traded your Girl Scout Mints for a litter of baby mice that all died because the house was too cold at night, so your dad replaced them with tropical fish.
We were the general store where you ran to fetch the mail every afternoon from Box 70 and spent your ten cent weekly allowance on a candy bar, and the girl named Rudy whose newborn sister had pierced ears and whose dad smoked from a hookah pipe, and Brian Osterday who was your perfect first love and who had a brother named Royal, the name of your orange cat.
We were the Snoqualmie Bull’s Saturday baseball games your dad coached and the fat catcher named Moose who later died from a broken leg. We were Brownie meetings in the basement of the library across the street.
We were the occasional shrieking of the firehouse alarm alerting your dad, in the volunteer squad to run up the block and help save distressed babies or car engine fires, and we were creek crawdads and guppies and the steady stream of bull fish hooked from the banks of the Snoqualmie River.
We were the long days that existed solely for the pleasures of swimming in the lagoons of that river, and the sandbar where some fishermen gave you your first can of beer and where you traced pictures in the sand and buried costume jewelry and brooches stolen from your mother’s dresser.
We were the sticker bushes alongside the banks where you harvested quarts of blackberries and traded to Mrs. Higgenbottom who made you a blue pie.
We were Mary Chesum whose parents were Yakima Indians and we were the Friday night when she was abducted from the house she was babysitting at, taken to the river where she was alternately chased, then stabbed, and chased again, repeatedly—her blood and clothing spilling across the lengths of the rocky bank—by a high school senior who she’d been refusing to date.
We were Mary Chesum’s younger sister Lisa, your friend, your classmate. You were the only two Indian girls in school, the only ones with that long black hair that wrapped around your shoulders like shawls. The only two girls who knew they were different, who knew they’d be singled out; girls who paired up for safety and refuge, for shelter; ones who knew how to flee to the banks of the river, instinctually, by memory.
We were there, that day on the playground when your shoelace had broken and Lisa without hesitation unbraided her lace and gave it to you.
We watched as she bent over and threaded the lace into the grommets of your shoe, then went for the remainder of the day with her one shoe loose and undressed.
Copyright © Tiffany Midge. All rights reserved.
Once Upon A River appeared in “Native Literatures: Generations," 2010.
Tiffany Midge’s book “Outlaws, Renegades and Saints, Diary of a Mixed-up Halfbreed” won the Diane Decorah Poetry Award. She’s most recently been published in North American Review, The Raven Chronicles, Florida Review and the online journal No Tell Motel. An enrolled Standing Rock Sioux and MFA grad from University of Idaho she lives in Moscow, Idaho (Nez Perce country) and teaches part time with Northwest Indian College.
https://tiffanymidge.wixsite.com/website
Archive | Author
Tiffany Midge
I Learned All My Spanish in School
By E.K. Keith
I never tried to pass for White
but I have been passed
because it's good to be White in America
and Mother knows best
to give a not-quite-white baby
White names that don't explain
such dark eyes and such tight curls
My name never stopped mean girls hissing
gringa cola prieta and guera and taco
brown on the inside
and not-quite-white on the outside
You would not believe how White people talk
about Other people when they think you're White
How it's more polite to say Spanish
instead of Mexican
and the subtle shift in tone
when your Mexican is discovered
your tortillas uncovered
I never tried to pass for White
but I have been passed
because White people who like me
want to give me the benefit of the doubt
and let me tell you, sister
There's nothing like White Privilege
and my mother knew it
So when people would ask
"Are you Italian or Greek?"
she would laugh and say
"Good guess!"
It is so disappointing
such dark eyes and such tight curls
fail to fit in
not White, not Mexican
I have been passed
I identify as White Trash
My mother is Mexican
but her family doesn't mind
porque no hay indios in la familia
And since I learned all my Spanish in school
it was years before I understood
It's good to be White in
America
Mythic Arcade
When I was a kid in Texas
California was nothing but a dream
Not much more than a metaphor
A fantasy of golden glitz and the big screen
I bet you know a lot about Texas
I bet I know what you’ve seen
Alamo heroes, political zeroes
Ten-gallon hats and oil patch schemes
You can find surfers in Texas
Riding in the oil tanker’s wake
You can find California cowboys
They’re speeding up and down the interstate
You can’t see Texas from the inside
You can’t see the mythic arcade
Just people, running for the money
Inside California it’s the same
If you need roots, go to Texas.
If you don’t belong where you are
You might find the right place is California
Who you want to be is who you are
Siblings
Brown sparrows
sift trash from a dump
find treasure
in mounds of rotting food
plastic wrappers aluminum
cans rusting toasters
shitty diapers hairdryers
headless dolls sideways
refrigerators without doors
One brown sparrow
beats its wings in the dirt
kicks
and tangles tighter
in a six-pack plastic noose
© E.K. Keith. All rights reserved.
Archive | Author
E.K. Keith
Fresh Wildness
By Rebecca Hatcher Travis
imbedded in every native
heart
is love of land
this earth we stand on
live on
our homeland
among first memories
a part of us
like our own bodies
we know the connection
sweet *petrichor brings
flashes
of childhood pleasures
we will always treasure
tender as flesh
her whipping winds
thunder rumbling
dust and rains
trembling darkness
heart-melting blueness
above
our Mother
draws us outdoors
to fresh wildness
where we belong
in our special place on
this wondrous earth
*petrichor: smell of rain
Copyright © 2016, Rebecca Hatcher
Travis. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Hatcher Travis, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, often writes of her indigenous heritage and the beauty of the natural world. Her poetry book manuscript, Picked Apart the Bones, won the First Book Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas and was published by the Chickasaw Press. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, literary journals and online. Ms. Travis is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and lives in south central Oklahoma, near the land her ancestors settled in Indian Territory days. She is currently working on another book of poetry and continues to give poetry presentations at Oklahoma venues.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Hatcher Travis, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, often writes of her indigenous heritage and the beauty of the natural world. Her poetry book manuscript, Picked Apart the Bones, won the First Book Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas and was published by the Chickasaw Press. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, literary journals and online. Ms. Travis is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and lives in south central Oklahoma, near the land her ancestors settled in Indian Territory days. She is currently working on another book of poetry and continues to give poetry presentations at Oklahoma venues.
Archive | Author
Rebecca Hatcher Travis
OFI’ TOHBI’ IHINA’
By Jenny
L. Davis
I didn’t
carry my ancestors’ bones with me
to this Midwestern place.
I could not hear their voices.
to this Midwestern place.
I could not hear their voices.
I asked
Rabbit to carry a note to them
but he baked it into cookies
and ate them with rosehip tea.
but he baked it into cookies
and ate them with rosehip tea.
I asked Woodpecker
to pound a song for them in cedar,
but the songs
could not cross the Mississippi.
but the songs
could not cross the Mississippi.
I
scratched a song in four lines for our ancestors
I wove a lullaby of yarn for our descendants, and
I stomped for all of us moving counter-clockwise in between.
I wove a lullaby of yarn for our descendants, and
I stomped for all of us moving counter-clockwise in between.
Finally
in the still of night
Cicada buzzed answers
in a tree beside my ear
Cicada buzzed answers
in a tree beside my ear
“We left
our bones
because we do not need them
to dance along the white dog's way.
because we do not need them
to dance along the white dog's way.
You do
not need them
to dance along
beneath us.”
to dance along
beneath us.”
Tethered
To the youth of Attawapiskat
and our Native & Two-Spirit youth everywhere,
hold tight to the things that tether
you.
Half a
lifetime ago
I sat on
the edge of a bed
holding cold gun metal until it turned warm
I sat there for hours.
Days.
Years.
I am sitting there still.
holding cold gun metal until it turned warm
I sat there for hours.
Days.
Years.
I am sitting there still.
I could
not move past the beings that tether me here.
You
are the beings that tether me here,
caught in a patch of briar so thick
I can’t break away without tearing a hole.
You are the beings that tether me here
And I hate you for it.
You
are the beings that tether me here,
caught in a patch of briar so thick
I can’t break away without tearing a hole.
You are the beings that tether me here
And I hate you for it.
I can’t
move past the beings that tether me here.
You
Are the beings that tether me here.
A sapling in the forest
Sharing water and gossip across our rooted toes.
You are the beings that tether me here
And I love you for it.
You
Are the beings that tether me here.
A sapling in the forest
Sharing water and gossip across our rooted toes.
You are the beings that tether me here
And I love you for it.
The girl who loves turtles
Summer is
her favorite season
with its
heavy shawl of water in the air
and sun
that can scorch the skin in minutes.
But most of all
But most of all
She loves
summer for the turtles
answering
the call to
come out
from under shell arbors,
from
behind winter aprons
and
spring cotton ruffles.
Loksi’!
Loski’! Loksi’!
Such
strength in the way their legs move,
hips and
shells rolling with each step
to
rhythms old as the ground itself.
No sharp
edges, just
the
curves of muscle and bone and
light
bouncing across browns, reds, and yellows
in the
heat of summer when
turtles
are called to each other to dance.
Let Us Rest
My people
were no
strangers to disasters—
the fires,
tornados, floods, and droughts
that
scorch, bury, and reshape the earth
where
they laid our ancestors to rest.
So dig up
the bundles.
Test
samples from bones,
cloth,
and clay—
for the
good of science,
toward
that next publication,
or a new
grant.
But don’t
pretend that
it’s what my ancestors would have wanted.
it’s what my ancestors would have wanted.
We
interred our loved ones
under our homes or within the great
under our homes or within the great
mounded
houses of earth
knowing,
when the time came,
they’d be
returned
to the
water, mud,
and to the stars.
and to the stars.
© Jenny L. Davis. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jenny L. Davis is a citizen of the
Chickasaw Nation and originally from Oklahoma. She is an assistant professor at
the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where she lives with her partner and spends most of her time
tending her cats (and cat-sized Chihuahua), plants, and the students in her
American Indian Studies and Anthropology classes. Both her research and
activism center contemporary indigenous identity, indigenous language
revitalization, and the Two-Spirit community.
WWW.AIS.ILLINOIS.EDU/PEOPLE/LOKSI
She is the author of Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance.
WWW.AIS.ILLINOIS.EDU/PEOPLE/LOKSI
She is the author of Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance.
Archive | Author
Jenny L. Davis
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