River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal

River, Blood, And Corn: A Community of Voices

At River, Blood, And Corn, we are promoting community and strengthening cultures with storytelling, poetry and prose.

Established in 2010 by Native writers, our starting point and our goal, is to honor the work and lifeways of Lee Francis III, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, to ensure the voices of Native writers and storytellers are heard throughout the world. A variety of writers, backgrounds, communities and viewpoints are presented. Included in our themes are the Elders whose lives informed, instructed, shaped and changed ours.

While our primary focus is Indigenous writers, we have woven writers and artists from a variety of ethnicities and communities into our pages. Perhaps people of many ethnicities, including recent immigrants from throughout the Americas as well as other parts of the world will find something in this collection that will speak to them with respect to issues of race, identity, culture, community, and representation.

Thank you to our readers. We are honored and grateful to each one of you.

Poetry by E. Fox

Ink & Lead

I’m too afraid to be that of the bold permanence.

Afraid to be the spilled ink seeped into the bones of a page.

Etched not only into the surface but run deep into one’s core.

With the daring stance of unwavering line after line.

Forever waiting to be scrutinized and yet still stay unchanged.

Never truly able to be erased.

Meekly covered in an attempt to be conformed.

All I ever will be is the faded lead.

The blended marks left on the page.

Standing alone in despair.

Left for others disposal.

Bringing the weight of everything sinking down.

Drowning to the bottomless pit of one’s mind.

Blackened with the ink pressed over my skin.

Seeing what is left in my wake.

Only after I’ve been erased.

Flesh Filled Face

You know that feeling when you see another beautiful person

And you can’t help but touch your own delicate skin in response

I can’t help but notice that mine is not so delicate

Not so beautiful

It feels as a softer mask waiting to be peeled from the bone

The flesh sits atop my skull in mock disguise

Seeing another beautiful person only makes me realize that I am not that

I am only a faceless entity waiting to truly figure out who I am

A Role, Not a Model

My dad never loved me, I know it

He liked me when I was just a small child

Until I got older and then

Then he didn’t even like me

I realize now it wasn’t hate when I was growing up

It was only dislike

It became hate as I aged more and more

But once I was “old enough,”

He started to like me once again

Or at least what he could make me to be

He liked that I didn’t like “her”

But he never realized I hated him too

It was almost in the same way he did me

But I was so much younger

I just wanted to be happy and loved

He never accepted my choices

They weren’t his, so neither was I

Even now it is the same

It always has been

And always will be

First published in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Thought

Fox is an Indigenous aspiring poet from the Arikara and Lakota-Sioux Nations who was born and raised in North Dakota. They have been a lover of books & reading from a very young age, always searching for more to fulfill themself with as time has gone forward. Their published works can be seen featured in Yellow Medicine Review's 2023 Fall Edition. Fox's motivation in writing stems from their want to reach all communities and show the ability along with the importance of Native American & LGBTQ+ youths' writing about the experiences of growing up & coming of age. Fox is currently a recent high school graduate with the hopes of transitioning to a career in creative writing through workshops and apprenticeships. With every gained experience, they are working on a collection of poetry with aspirations to soon publish a book of their own that will help take off their career in writing.

Pick a Garnet to Sleep In

by Kim Shuck

We are hunting the graveyards and

Practicing fly-casting off of the roof at 4am

It must be summer

I paint the symbols on my feet

Study the evolution of bats and

21st century poetry of the 600 block of Chenery

Oh child

I braid you into my hair most days

And I’m the only one who can read you there

But then

We are descended from the symbolic dead and

I’m becoming the old woman out of those stories

If not as quickly as I’d hoped

Kim Shuck loves fiddling with words and puzzles and stones. Shuck served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco and is still recovering. Her latest book is Pick a Garnet to Sleep In.

Yugtarvik: A Tʌndrə’d Glimp

by Alice Rose Crow ~ Maar’aq

Alice Rose Crow ~ Maar’aq is among the kass’ayagat of the Kusquqvaq diaspora. She is an independent maker based in Anchorage, Alaska. For the Covid-19-year of 2021, the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center invited Alice to curate a series of creative interpretations to augment ongoing efforts to examine archived collections. A mutual and consolatory goal is to bring attention and reflection to little known and overlooked elements living within the Anchorage Yugtarvik.3 An inclination is to keep stepping toward broadened and deepened groundedness, mutual acknowledgment, contemplation, engagement, understanding, deep dialogue, and sharing among First Alaskans, relatives, migrants, expats, and allanret4 across generations, languages, and amid evolving cultures, technologies, and world views.

Her mixed form 2021 collection commissioned by the Anchorage Museum,Yugtarvik: A Tʌndrə’d Glimp, is available via the yugtarvik’s website at https://www.anchoragemuseum.org/major-projects/projects/chatter-marks/#journal (scroll down to Journal Issues).

Yugtarvik: A Tʌndrə’d Glimp is also available for direct digital download:

https://view.flipdocs.com/?ID=10017700_675590

Denise Low Postings | Supporting writers and their events

Denise Low, former Kansas Poet Laureate, is award-winning author of 30 books of prose and poetry. She blogs at Denise Low Postings with reviews, supporting writers and their events, and co-publishes Mammoth Publications, which specializes in Indigenous American authors.

http://deniselow.blogspot.com

Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging

University of Nebraska Press

Edited by Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez

Table of Contents and Contributors

Unpapered is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship.

Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to “pretendians”—non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits—and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples’ professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.