Deer Trails by Kim Shuck

Deer Trails is a strongly elegiac evocation of a San Francisco that lies buried under its contemporary urban landscape, but can still be found peeking through. Native American and native San Franciscan Kim Shuck is the city's seventh poet laureate, and in these poems she celebrates the enduring presence of indigenous San Francisco as a form of resistance to gentrification, urbanization, and the erasure of memory. www.kimshuck.com

Deer Trails San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 7 Kim Shuck 

Trickster Story

by Jenny L. Davis

I’m going to tell you 
a story about why the 
Tricksters no longer 
talk to each other. 
They say long ago 
that the animals used 
to talk together, just 
like people do today. 
One day, Rabbit, 
Coyote, Raven, 
Spider, Buzzard 
and Fox all took 
seats around 
a table together 
for the first time 
in a long while 
eying each other warily. 
Finally, Fox cleared 
her throat and said, 
Thanks for coming— 
As you know, 
the point of today’s 
faculty meeting 
is to decide who 
among us gets a 
merit raise this year. 

Trickster Story appears in the Fall 2019 issue of North Dakota Quarterly 
© 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 uapress.arizona.edu/book/talking-indian

 

#MyNameIsImmigrant—No. 3

Write
Write this down
My name is Maya Angelou
Daughter of Africa, Voice of America
The KKKs want to send me back
You may shoot me with your words
You may cut me with your eyes
You may kill me with your hatefulness
But still, like air, I’ll rise

Write
Write this down
My name is Ilhan Omar
Daughter of Somalia, Congresswoman of America
The President wants to send me back
You may shoot me with your chant
You may cut me with your lies
You may kill me with your bigotry
But still, like wind, I rise.

Write
Write this down
My name is Ping Wang
Daughter of China, Conscience of America
The President wants to send me back
You may shoot me with your defamations
You may trap me with your fabricated charges
You may kill me with your money and power
But still, in poetry, I speak

In poetry we speak
In poetry we break the cage and sing
Rise
Carrying our ancestors’ dream
We’re the purple of mountain majesties
We’re the waves of amber grain
We’re the wings of America
As we rise
To the halcyon skies

Wang Ping is a poet, writer, photographer, performance and multimedia artist. Her publications have been translated into multiple languages and include poetry, short stories, novels, cultural studies, and children stories. Her multimedia exhibitions address global themes of industrialization, the environment, interdependency, and the people. She is the recipient of numerous awards and is a professor of English at Macalester College and founder of Kinship of Rivers project. www.wangping.com