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

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.