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.

Ridin’ the 40 Home

A page from Smoked Mullet Cornbread Crawdad Memory 

(for big sis K.R.)

They say everything is bigger

in Texas, that is propaganda.

Riding back from Albuquerque

sister at wheel. We talk, squawking

clicks, a pair of ravens making

magic with our tongues.

Keeping language carefully —

cuz we women know words are spears.

Holding breath through Texas,

Tribal plates, eagle feather, beaded

tobacco pouch swinging from rearview

mirror like lighthouse guiding coppers:

INDIAN WOMEN TRAVELING.

Texas don’t like their Indians or Mexicans.

Why tolerate neighbor Indians crossing

invisible borders—never really there

to begin with? Our chatter slows. 

Silence, along I-40 through Tejas.

Sis’s car big enough to hold

eight, more with determination.

Carried folks from half the tribes

in Oklahoma to and from meeting.

Indians pilled up one on top the other,

individual lines drawn through Traverse

representing “the I-35 dividin’ line—

two different countries,” sis says.

Southeast Indians and Plains Tribes.

Sis’s car is a mini Okie Indian County.

In this car Indians slept, prayed, played.

Gone to NAC meetings crawled in

worn, tired from prayers, peyote,

fasting, mourning, rites and rituals.

This wagon sheltered, kept Indians both

sides of I-35 safe, out of cold. Housed so

many prayers doors burst vibrate singing

with medicine in languages old as earth.

                                                     

We pass the Oklahoma state line,

exhale, our tongues come back to life.

Not that we were worried, riding in

purple peyote wagon, full of prayers

weren’t no way we wasn’t getting home.

Pick up conversation as if silence never

shrouded us, as true sisters can—half

with words spoken, half with knowing

in marrow, memory, whispers in blood.

Looking up Oklahoma sky rolling by stars

are so close you can ask them to dance,

move, twirl for you, blink and keep

an ever-watchful eye. Eyes of those who

walked on before us. Oklahoma night sky

hangs low over plains stretching to meet

endless horizon. We roll forward rhythm of

wheels making music— I swear hear

Three Dog Night sing

“Well I never been to Heaven,

but I’ve been to Oklahoma…”

First published in Smoked Mullet Cornbread Crawdad Memory, Mongrel Empire Press, Norman, OK 2012. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rain Prud'homme-Cranford (Louisiana Choctaw/Creole/Mvskoke/Metis/Celtic) is the Sutton Doctoral Fellow in English at University of Oklahoma, She won the 2009 First Book Award in poetry for Smoked Mullet Cornbread Crawdad Memory (Mongrel Empire Press-Fall 2012), from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, (NWCA). Her second book, Miscegenation Round Dance: Poèmes Historiques, is currently under review and she is working on her third poetry and prose manuscript: RAW: Lwizyàn Mestizà Unsilences & other poetical oddities. A self-described “TriRacially Fluffy and Fabulous” Louisiana Méstiza, she is of Louisiana Choctaw, Louisiana Creole,  and Mvskogean descent paternally, and of Canadian Métis and CelticAmerican ancestry maternally. She was raised and grew up along the Gulf south in Mvskogean-Creole homelands. Creative and critical can be found in: Tidal Basin Review, Natural Bridge, SING: Indigenous Poetry of the Americas, Yellow Medicine Review, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Louisiana Folklife Journal, and various others. Rain is the National Secretary for Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and as of 2012 the Assistant National Director of NWCA. She is the newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of the NWCA Literary and Art Journal (Red), launching Spring 2013. She lives in Oklahoma City, near her sister beadwork, regalia, and mixed media artist Tee Shawnee and family where the sisters collaborate and laugh with family and children.

Weeping Women

By Rain Prud'homme-Cranford

When we weep

Mothers cry with us.

When we weep

Grandmothers pat their eyes.



Bits of blood and spit,

Dried salt and amniotic fluid

Make tears falling briefly,

Before we push them away--

As all weeping women before us.

Gathering strength from toes

Rooted in soil memories

And arms strong with

Carrying baskets

Of babies.

Carrying baskets

Of culture.



Weeping women cling

To the edge of dream

Crying for their lost children,

Crying for their husbands.

With sobs too deep and full

Of histories of biting back moans

That their tears fall as silent as death.



Against the rough periphery of memory

The whimper of ladies’ lamentations

Carve tributaries of grief inherent

In blood, from the fishing towns of

The Mississippi river to the

Buffalo plains of Saskatchewan.

Separated by geography.

United by blood.

They sing songs of sorrow

Into our unconscious actions---

Laced with brittle

Hope,

Survival,

Unstoppable Grace.


Copyright © Rain Prud'homme-Cranford. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rain Prud'homme-Cranford is a poet, academic, musician and spoken word artist. Currently she is a Sutton Fellowship Doctoral student in English at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Smoked Mullet Cornbread Crawdad Memory, winner of the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas First Book Award, Poetry. Her work has appeared in various journals including Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry and American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Rain’s critical work focuses on (re)inserting Mvskogean and Creole Indigeneity into Southern Literary experience.