River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal

Grandma's Invitation

by Julene Waffle

“I can read a newspaper by the moonlight tonight,”

she said, looking out the window above the kitchen sink.

I knew it as a brief invitation,

scratched quickly on air,

to sit and watch the interstitial moments

of deep dusk turned night.

Moon-shadows dripped from tree branches

like honey-glaze on fresh-baked biscuits,

and breezes carried crushed fern and summer tree

musk down the mountain on their backs.

Under wind-tousled hair, we held our breaths

as nocturnal shadows danced and

jumped from tree to tree,

memories of midnight dreams.

Peepers chirruped their love songs;

their lovers answered flirtatiously.

Bats swooped silently for insect supper,

and evening birds tittered and whispered,

buttoning the last vestiges of day to close.

On nights like this, we’d sit on the porch

amidst unfinished chores and stories untold

in thin night dresses and slippers, ready for sleep,

willing witnesses, yet bed and pillow

insufficient temptations.

Together,

we’d sit and listen

in our own silences.

Eyes closed, she’d soak in the damp of

night and heart-whisper her

own love songs and dreams and memories.

Sometimes her lips would curl, flatten, or oh,

forming thoughts on air

but uttering no sound.

Her white hair brushed out and standing on end,

a crown of wisdom or a cloud of doubt,

I didn’t know which.

And me, afraid to listen, afraid to not,

I’d watch her, hoping to learn something,

but I couldn't tell what

except to say I wish I had asked.

Julene Waffle is a mother of three boys and a secondary English Teacher for over 20 years in a small rural upstate New York school. Her love of language was perpetuated at Hartwick College and Binghamton University. Her poetry, speaking to the everyday people of her everyday life, is widely published.

All-american Gong Girl

By Deborah Jang

Eldest daughter of Gong Chow and
Siu Shee, immigrant couple from China.
Born in Richmond, California, north
of San Francisco, just across the bay.

Named Fong Yuet for the ancestors. State-
side she was June. To me, forever Mom.
Fireworks the night before announced
her arrival July fifth nineteen thirty.

Every Independence Day she felt pangs
of affirmative glee -- as if she belonged.
At least to the sky. At nine she was sent
to Chinese school in San Francisco,

an immigrant custom she soon rejected.
She hopped on the Greyhound bus alone,
rode home to her parents’ chagrin.
At Richmond Elementary she joined

the harmonica band, worked the restaurant
after school, did not miss a shift.
During wartime the family moved
to the valley, where June was a big hit.

Team debater, class treasurer, best-dressed
girl at Merced High — she had it going on.
Chinese pilots training at the air base
lined up for her dance card. She tango’d,

cha-cha’d, bunny hopped with gusto
and soft laughter. Got a job downtown
Merced selling ladies dresses. Took up with
the owner who promised to promote her.

Post-war, Gong Chow had made plans
to return to China. The story goes June
said NO, kept her little sister with her
while the ship dipped off horizon.

June and sis stayed with Monroe, the now
betrothed store owner. He promised
her folks his good care but didn’t really
follow through, so June then divorced him

Though not before the three of us claimed
her heart forever. Dave Allen was the next guy.
With him she bore two more sons, of Chinese
Irish extraction. Bridge clubs, soccer,

cul-de-sacs filled her American sky. Especially
on July fourth her urgent eyes scanned
the night for oomph pah pah, or maybe
something keener. By now we lived back

by the bay. It was the flowered sixties.
Her five young grew out their hair,
while she and Dave plied the days
with good times, hard work, harder drink.

He died young, she carried on, the children
ventured forth. Her last man was Ken Wilkins,
though there were others in between - all this
to say, she enjoyed the company of fellows.

When Ken passed it hit her hard. The children
couldn't save her. At sixty-two June was through.
We sprinkled her at sea. I strike the gong.
It rumbles wide, ripples up night sky.

Where do the good, kindhearted go?

To lipstick smiles
left on napkins perfectly
half stuck on rims
where gin and tonics flowed

Gliding long as fingertips
that tucked me into cool
crisp sheets in days when sleep
was easy, a keeper
of shy adorations
nestled in young motherlove

Arpege, Pall Malls, show
tunes, novels, husbands
in a row, loud laughing
midnight parties
turned to shouting
or big whispers
then to fragile mornings after

Scrabble, dim sum, Niners,
grandkids

Now to ashes dancing
at the gate, not
missing one last beat.

© Deborah Jang. All Rights Reserved.

Deborah Jang writes her way through the mysteries, perplexities, and joys of being human — on this planet, at this moment, in this skin. She is also a visual artist, engaging connection through forms and objects. She wanders between Denver, CO and Oceanside, CA; between mind and heart; between land and sea. She invites you to visit her website at deborahjang.com

Crow Quotes Revisited

by MariJo Moore

Many years ago, I had a premonition of starting a little publishing company, and so I did. Crow Quotes was the first book published by rENEGADE pLANETS pUBLISHING. This was in 1996. At the time, I was admonished for being a self-published writer; one well-known book reviewer refused to review my books because of this. My, my, how times have changed. I have always been a bit ahead of my time. (The first edition of the book was published on hemp.)

So it goes. Through the past years I have written many other books: novels, poetry, fiction, non- fiction, and edited several anthologies of Indigenous writers, all which have been teachings and sharings. However, Crow Quotes has always come back to my mind, in bits and pieces of the quotes, reminding me so much about life. And by receiving, even recently, letters and emails from readers who relate how have they kept this little book by their side, relishing the quotes - some over twenty years.

Several months ago I was given another premonition - it was time to offer Crow Quotes again. Time for the book to expand and reach out into the world in a new format. And so I have. Thus, Crow Quotes Revisited.

Sample of quotes:

"Keep in mind you are a part of the whole.
The future is planted within you."

"Want to confuse a crow?
Try explaining human religions."

Cover art by noted Pueblo artist Virgi Ortiz.

For more info and to order, please visit www.marijomoore.com/booksandart.html

Thank you for supporting an independently owned company.

MariJo Moore
www.marijomoore.com

Art Works

by Robert Bensen

Sara Bates, “Honoring Circle” (sculpture)

Before a shop built downtown sealed over a spring and a little creek,

excavation turned up the bones of a man, his pipe and some shards of clay

that came from this embankment above the Susquehanna—

clay that made the brick that made the shop that hides the creek

that flows through pipe that’s made with clay that made the pipe they dug

beside the man they found not long ago, long after he had turned to clay.

If spirit lives in everything and everything in spirit

then the young woman with a virus raging in the head

who has fallen asleep beside Sarah's “Honoring Circle” while the rest write

may have dreamed herself one day as pleasant as this

beside a pretty little creek above a bluff and drank from its talkative source

in the warmth of a complicated sun, an agitated sun

flaring with seeds and pods and leaves and shells and petals,

a composed sun from whose center the crossed roads carry

what they always carry down their seven shining paths

until the red sun of evening stripes her face

and she flutters awake to find herself alone

with this work, this disk of gifts on the floor, walk about

and wonder what on earth she saw in it, and what she sees.

An excerpt from Before by Robert Bensen

Robert Bensen has published six collections of poetry, including Orenoque, Wetumka & Other Poems, and Before. His work has earned an NEA poetry fellowship, the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Harvard Summer Poetry Prize, and Illinois Arts Council and NY State Council on the Arts awards. His scholarship in the Caribbean and Native America has produced essays, studies, and editions, won fellowships from the NEH and Newberry Library, and led to teaching in St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. He is the editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Hartwick College (1978-2017). He teaches at SUNY-Oneonta, and conducts a poetry workshop at Bright Hill Literary Center, Treadwell.

www.robertbensen.com

How Turtle Got Her Shell

by Jenny L. Davis

Did you know
Turtle
didn’t always have
a shell?
She grew it
to keep
from being crushed
fortifying
her own body
ribs
vertebrae
clavicle
into carapace and plastron
learning a whole
new way to
breath to
walk to
live
to protect
her from
predators.
She knew
safety
requires strength
survival
means fortifying
softness

© Jenny L. Davis. All rights reserved.

Jenny L. Davis (Chickasaw) is a Two-Spirit/queer Indigenous writer and professor of American Indian Studies and Anthropology. Her creative work has been featured in literary journals including the Santa Ana River Review; Transmotion; Anomaly; Broadsided; and as well as anthologies such as As/Us; Raven Chronicles; and Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance.

Author of Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance (The University of Arizona Press). uapress.arizona.edu/book/talking-indian

Dancing to Remember

by Terra Trevor

I am gathered with friends and family under a bead blue sky. Powwow weekend. Santa Ynez Chumash Inter-Tribal. My shawl is folded over my arm. I listen to the wind, spilling through the tree leaves. Time merges with timelessness. Memories circle and carry me to a day forty years ago, when I stood on this good land, near the oak tree for the first time, with my young children gathered about.

The same tree I am standing under today. I lean my back against this oak. This tree, giver of life. She has raised a community with song, dance and prayer. We return to this land, to this tree, in October every year. Laughter, flirting and romance in lives young and old take place all around her. She stands sentry. Her autumn softened leaves, swept up from a cool mountain breeze, fall gently on American Indian fathers holding sleeping babies. Mothers trading stories, their shiny cut beads reflecting light while braiding their children’s hair, with feathers in the colors of the earth, trailing.

There were difficult times too for this oak tree, when she witnessed wild fires raging, drought years with dust rising against the clear sky. The times when her branches sheltered human arguments and angry outbursts, but mostly she is surrounded by love and caring.

I stand high upon a flat rock, my eyes roaming, taking in the day, the years. Filling my lungs with sweet fragrances of the damp Mother Earth. Feeling my body grow light, like the feathers of the red tail hawk touching the soft clouds.

For the record I am not California Indian. I am mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and for forty years I have lived near a creek in an area that makes up the traditional Chumash homeland. I’m walking gently, a guest on this good land and I hold the culture, traditions and history of the Chumash people in my heart. For my Chumash friends this is their landscape of time.

I remember the words of my aunties, my grandmother, about how each person is a link to history and that when it comes to powwows all Native people gathered around the arena are participating as we form a circle around the drums, singers and dancers. And how every Native person gathered is connected, making a statement that American Indian people are still here. This is our celebration of life past, present and future.

First published in the Spring 2019, vol. 2, issue 3 of News From Native California, a quarterly magazine devoted to California's Indian peoples. This essay also appears in We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor.

Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press). She is a contributor to fifteen books in Native studies, Native literature, nonfiction and memoir. Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals 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), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), Voices Confronting Pediatric Brain Tumors (Johns Hopkins University Press), Take A Stand: Art Against Hate: A Raven Chronicles Anthology, and in numerous other books. Of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German, her stories are steeped in themes of place and belonging, and are shaped and infused by her identity as a mixed-blood, and her connection to the landscape. She is the founding editor of River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal. terratrevor.com