APACHE DANCE IN LOOSE PARK

by Linda Rodriguez

The man and woman in the frozen park
at midnight are crazy. See
them dance—come together,
her eyes spitting, his aware of his sin.
Watch her rigid stance
melt and his slouch turn fierce.
With choreographed impulse, her hand extends
to touch his cheek. He jerks away
in pain or something rougher.
Her shoulders sag, then square
themselves and shrug. She pivots,
ready to leave. Now he reaches out,
spins her around, draws her
close. She struggles
against his arms and chest, hands fluttering, while
he drags her off the spotlit sidewalk.
Watch her glance at the dark bushes, then
at the strange hate
in his face. See how grim
her own grows, how
she tosses her head toward the night,
as if to say, “Go ahead.
Get it over with. Rape me, kill me,
end it somehow. You can’t want that
any more than I do.”
Now his face softens.
Once more she tries to touch.
He sways away from her outstretched fingertips.

They’re crazy. Listen
to her laugh, twisting loose
and whirling away from her opponent
in the dance or war
they’ve staged here
where all breath is visible
under the streetlamps. How fast
she runs to her car and leaves.
How unprepared for this step he is.
He can’t reach out
to stop her until her car is rolling
down the drive. In the rearview mirror,
she will see his hand lift,
his mouth open, his face twist,
and she will notice
what a stranger he is, older
and fatter and sadder
than she realized.
She will stop for coffee and doughnuts
and warmth, sit coughing and shivering
alone and hate every man
who eyes her. He will clutch his chest
alone under the streetlamp,
bowing to the audience of tree and frost,
then stumble, suddenly blind,
to his car and drink
himself to bed, only to dream
of shrubs hiding blood and bruised flesh
on the frozen ground, of how
a man can come so close to killing
what he loves.

First published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)
Copyright © Linda Rodriguez. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda Rodriguez’s three novels published by St. Martin’s Press featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—have received critical recognition and awards, such as Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Award, selections of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, 2nd Place in the International Latino Book Awards, finalist for the Premio Aztlán Award, 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award, and Barnes & Noble mystery pick. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.


For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships.

Rodriguez is 2015 chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal American Writer’s Caucus, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers and Kansas City Cherokee Community.

lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com


Privilege

By M. Carmen Lane

you
are only
interested
in the dead
pieces of
me

black woman
raped/
tracked
by white men
with bottles
stones

lesbian/
who lost
her lover

daughter
witness to
too much
violence

suicide/
dull blade
time release
pills

mother/
baby that
never took
its first
breath

Indian
without
his song

father/
whose
children were
stolen because
they are
queer

addict/ hands
dried with
nicotine &
blood

you are
only interested
in the grief &
trauma

a moaning song

eyes that
have seen
too much

nose that
smells your
shit from
afar

feet soppy
of your
entitled
mess

shrunk
down
powerful

sweeping/
your house
to a horrifying
clean

parts
left on
the dying
tree/ rotting
flesh dried on
an old rope

your daddy’s
whipping post/
crucified in a
jail cell/ dusty
road to
drag me
limp

he/
who was
between
an ancestor’s
legs

bastard
runaway

musician
stopped
at the edge
of jazz

poet/ never
shared her
good words

dancer/ who
dared not
to deform
her feet

warrior
whose
resistance
warranted
no tale

listen closely
you sonofabitch

those parts
of me
alive &
well/
untangled
smooth
as a scar

they/ are
coming for

you


Copyright © M. Carmen Lane. All Rights Reserved.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. Carmen Lane (African-American/Mohawk/Tuscarora) is a poet, cultural worker and consultant. Carmen's work has been published in Red Ink Magazine, The Yellow Medicine Review and is a contributor to the Lambda Literary Award nominated anthology Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature.  She is the author of Calling Out After Slaughter 
www.lanecatalytics.com





Sky Woman

By M. Carmen Lane

uprooted

& pushed
through

stillness
came for
me

there was
nothing
left to do
but fall

onto the
smooth/
bumpy back
of Turtle

watch

as Nana’s
primordial
soil spreads
bringing
equilibrium

woods
& water

purpose
unknown/
this new
world
is waiting
for you
my sons

I pass on
pregnant
thoughts
of good will/
possibility

unmoving
&
unable to
let all
the grief
go

I carried too
the shadow
side of
joy

tangled
energy

my offspring
will play out
this tension
over & again

my head on
a pike

even ceremony
will not be
enough

we must
examine again
our resistance

like the
ancestors
uprooted/
falling
through
into new
life


Copyright © M. Carmen Lane. All Rights Reserved.

M. Carmen Lane, author of Calling Out After Slaughter







M. Carmen Lane (African-American/Mohawk/Tuscarora) is a poet, cultural worker and consultant. Carmen's work has been published in Red Ink Magazine, The Yellow Medicine Review and is a contributor to the Lambda Literary Award nominated anthology Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature. 
www.lanecatalytics.com



Kimberly L. Becker, Poet

In the Purple and Blue of It
—From Words Facing East By Kimberly L. Becker

Walking the property
In the late afternoon
In the purple and blue of it
The stand of pines
Fairytale deepness
Past the reservoir
Crunching hulls of black walnuts
Thinking:
This is sacred ground
My eyes devour the view
That I like to claim as mine
But know it’s not, despite the deed
When I return to the anxiety
Of the city
I will long for this land
As a lover for the body of the beloved
I will recall its voice
The trickle of creek
       call of hawks
       rain as it comes up the valley
I have seen mesas
Great red tables
Altars for sacrifice
But it is these mountains
I hold against the bruise of my heart
The purple and blue 
Of their mothering forms

Purple       and       blue

Words Facing East (WordTech Editions, 2011)

Copyright © Kimberly L. Becker. All rights reserved. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in Georgia, raised in North Carolina, Kimberly L. Becker is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and is of Cherokee/Celtic/Teutonic descent. She is the author of two poetry collections, Words Facing East (WordTech Editions, 2011) and The Dividings (WordTech Editions, 2014). Individual poems appear widely in journals and anthologies.  Other published writing includes fiction, essays, reviews, and a series of interviews with other Native writers. Current projects include adapting traditional Cherokee stories into plays for the Cherokee Youth in Radio Project at the Cherokee Youth Center in Cherokee, North Carolina. Kimberly has been awarded grants from the New Jersey State Arts Council, the Montgomery County Arts and Humanities Council (Maryland), as well as a fellowship to the Hambidge Artist Residency Program in the North Georgia mountains. She has held an Individual Artist Award in Poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council and been Writer-in-Residence at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities (North Carolina).  She has been a featured reader at many venues, including "Native Writers in DC" at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. She is happiest within sight of the mountains. 
www.kimberlylbecker.com


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