River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal

Crisosto Apache named the 11th Colorado Poet Laureate

Crisosto Apache is originally from Mescalero, New Mexico (US), on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and currently lives in the Denver metro area in Colorado. They are Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the 'Áshįįhí (Salt Clan) born for the Kinyaa'áanii (Towering House Clan) and are Associate Professor of English at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. They hold an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

crisostoapache.com

Sacred Grief

by Hollee A. McGinnis a.k.a. Lee Hwa Young

Because we lost

families and cultures

as children, before we had words

and could only express

the loss and grief

through our bodies,

crying, acting out,

behaviors that adults want to stop,

we learned we do not

have permission to grieve.

And yet, grief is the holding

of the paradoxical and simultaneous

experience of love and loss.

We grieve because we loved.

We grieve because we have lost that love.

We loved our mothers, fathers,

sisters and brothers. And

we lost our mothers, fathers,

sisters and brothers.

Why not give permission

to grieve that love that was lost?

This is the grief

that never gets expressed

and released: that turns

into anger, self-loathing, hate.

We have all experienced love

and the loss of that love.

Through a parent,

who did not return our devotion,

a lover, who no longer

matched our passion,

a friend who turned enemy,

a death.

We find it

hardly bearable

to imagine

we loved so much

and were so loved.

And not believing

ourselves to be

loveable and loved,

we cannot access

the doorway

that is offered

by sacred grief

because we are in denial

that we were ever loved.

And so, we sit

only with the loss, and

we think we are grieving

all we lost.

But the sacred grief

is the realization:

we are grieving

our knowing

of how much we loved,

of how much we are loved.

Hollee A. McGinnis, MSW, PhD, is a scholar, writer, healer, and wayfinder. Adopted from South Korea, she has worked for decades in community organizing, policy, and research on childhood adversity, adoption, complex trauma, cultural loss, identity, and mutual aid. As a wayfinder, she integrates Western science and Eastern ancestral wisdom for transformation and healing.

Hollee writes at https://substack.com/@holleemcginnis

A Winter Solstice Love Story

by Terra Trevor

For forty-three years I lived on the Central California Coast in an area that makes up the traditional Chumash homeland. In those beautiful days our solstice celebrations were rooted in the traditional ways of the Chumash.

Four years ago, I moved away, away from the land and people who raised and shaped me. Now I’m living near my grandchildren on the Northern California Coast. Everything is still new for me, unfamiliar. I’m walking gently while this Indigenous California landscape in Ohlone territory teaches me who I am.

For the record, I’m not Chumash. I’m mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German descent, with ties to Korean. And I hold the culture, traditions, and history of the Chumash people in my heart. This is their heritage, their life blood, and their landscape of time. And for all Native people Solstice is a time to honor the connection to our ancestors, to the rhythm of nature and our continuing deepening ties.

In my bones I remember, and I can still hear and feel the slap of the wansaks’—a musical instrument made from the branch of an elderberry—beat out a steady rhythm and a mix of laughing voices of my friends gathered contrast with the drift of fog and the heavy surf pounding. Lanterns are lit against the darkening evening and a fire is built, where storytelling takes place. Salmon is on the grill, potatoes are roasting, and the picnic table is loaded with more food. We are honoring solstice, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day and the longest night of the year. For people throughout the ages—from the ancient Egyptians and Celts to the Hopi—midwinter has been a time of ritual, reflection, and renewal.

Solstices happen twice a year, around June 21 and again around December 21. The date is not fixed, it varies; the December Solstice can take place on December 20, 21, 22, 23. While we usually think of the whole day as the Solstice, it actually takes place at a specific moment when the Sun is precisely overhead the Tropic of Capricorn. Solstice helps us cultivate a deeper connection to nature and to all of the things that matter most to us. It’s a time for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. Prayers and rituals set forth a plan of life for the coming year, ceremonially turning back the sun toward its summer path.

Throughout history, honoring the solstice has been a way to renew our connection with each other and with acts of goodwill, special rituals, and heightened awareness. Solstice is also reserved for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. It’s a period for quiet reflection, turning inward, slowing down and appreciating the day, the hour, and each moment.

While we don’t know how long people have been celebrating the solstice, we do know that ancient cultures built stone structures designed to align with the sun at specific times, and in ancient times the winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. There was an emphasis on the fall harvest and storing food for winter.

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind. Tonight as we near Winter Solstice, with a December moon above me, and the only light I can see, I’m falling back in time. My memories are washing over me like a series of massive waves hitting hard, without warning. As soon as I catch my breath another beautiful memory pulls me back home. My mind floats back over the years. Memories surface—and feelings that remain untouched in my heart, in that place of perpetual remembering. All those Winter Solstice nights of long ago, when we were young, and our elders walked this good earth with us, when we gathered for a good meal together, with storytelling, laughter, conversation, dance, and songs from the ancestors. Fire offerings of chia seeds, acorn flour, and berries were made, followed by prayer and ceremony.

Now, I’m in my seventies, nearly the same age as the elder Native women who guided me, informed, instructed and shaped me into the woman I am today. I’m honoring my Indigenous community with gratitude for their love and the gift of their time they gave me, helping me give to others.

With the night sky, dark and beautiful above, I walk toward the sea and stand silent in respect to the ancient peoples who left the witness of their lives, visions, and the strength of their faith for me to ponder. The scent of sage hangs in the air. I fill my lungs with it, knowing it will permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I can feel and remember when we were together long ago.

Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press). Her essays are widely published in anthologies, including Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), and Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press). She is the founding editor of River, Blood, And Corn. Terra writes at Words Facing West on Substack.

WomanSong

by Linda Boyden

There’s never an easy time to be a woman;

Harder yet to be a woman of Color.

You know, one of the standard four-skin

variety pack–Black, White, Red, Yellow?

But what about us MixedBloods?

What are we? The Grays? Pinks? Ecrus,

Coppers, Burt Siennas?

Color confuses.

Makes some see outrage;

Others, pity or an-in-your-face-kind-of-scorn.

Senseless. Color can’t speak the truth.

The truth lives under the color.

As each succeeding generation mutes

and blends the tones,

The blending carries us closer

To the true state of our souls,

The final destination of being Colorless.

The power of woman brings us into the world,

Leads us to the safety, comfort, and pain of our world.

If we are lucky, in the end, the power of woman will sing us through our deaths,

Carry us home,

Where there are no tints and shades,

Where there is only sanctuary, and the solace of the open arms of the Grandmothers.

Women, when there is nothing else to give your child,

Give her a song, a strong woman song.

Sing us, Mothers, sing us home.

Linda Boyden writes children’s books and poetry. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers. She is the author of The Blue Roses (Lee and Low Books), Powwow's Coming (University of New Mexico Press), and Giveaways: An ABC Book of Loanwords from the Americas (University of New Mexico Press).

Kim Shuck Poetry

Call this time of year

Windswept and sight

Down the phone lines to

Infinity- they say-

Which

Considering our road and direction

Might be

Bartlesville a place

Misheard into another language I know it

Both the place and the

Language in a patchwork of

Supper and

Relatives

Filling station and

Random nouns a

Blanket that smells of

Grandma Mae a

Story about

Grand Lake the

Word for a specific turtle the

Feel of sandals in

Creek mud

Kim Shuck is the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco Emerita. Shuck is solo author of 9 books, co-authored one, edited another ten and has contributed to a vast array of anthologies, journals, curriculum guides, tours, and protests. www.kimshuck.com

César Love Poetry

Photographs not Taken

Not the selfie before the pyramid

Not the banquet where we ate and gorged

The falcons in formation above your chimney

The crime you witnessed but your testimony ignored

That lakeside stroll when sunset rays revealed her truest beauty

Maybe you held your camera but were too in awe

It never became a photo, now it’s a minor regret.

Somewhere in the head’s rear lobe

Snapshot memories keep in Kodachrome

Some are stored in black-and-white, some in sepia tone

There they fade like everything else.

Finally you are cremated

Your mind’s gallery turns ash

Then they become something to touch

Each picture a shingle on the scales

Of the wings of your moth.

Daytime Moon

sighted at 3 o’clock at this hour,

a salt cracker

by midnight, vanilla ice cream

Request to the Whale

You beast of myth, you beast of time

Your journeys though oceans are vaster than the moon flights

The barnacles of your hide are as bumpy as the decades, as coarse as history

I am unworthy to ride on your back. Explain to me one simple thing I might understand.

Share with me one chapter from your voyages. Teach to me one vowel of your language.

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. He is the author of Birthright and While Bees Sleep. cesarlovepoetry.yolasite.com