Pick a Garnet to Sleep In

by Kim Shuck

We are hunting the graveyards and 

Practicing fly-casting off of the roof at 4am 

It must be summer 

I paint the symbols on my feet 

Study the evolution of bats and 

21st century poetry of the 600 block of Chenery 

Oh child 

I braid you into my hair most days 

And I’m the only one who can read you there 

But then 

We are descended from the symbolic dead and 

I’m becoming the old woman out of those stories 

If not as quickly as I’d hoped 

Copyright © 2024 Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.

 

Kim Shuck loves fiddling with words and puzzles and stones. Shuck served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco and is still recovering. Her latest book is Pick a Garnet to Sleep In.

Yugtarvik: A Tʌndrə’d Glimp

by Alice Rose Crow ~ Maar’aq 

 

Alice Rose Crow ~ Maar’aq is among the kass’ayagat of the Kusquqvaq diaspora. She is an independent maker based in Anchorage, Alaska. For the Covid-19-year of 2021, the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center invited Alice to curate a series of creative interpretations to augment ongoing efforts to examine archived collections. A mutual and consolatory goal is to bring attention and reflection to little known and overlooked elements living within the Anchorage Yugtarvik.3 An inclination is to keep stepping toward broadened and deepened groundedness, mutual acknowledgment, contemplation, engagement, understanding, deep dialogue, and sharing among First Alaskans, relatives, migrants, expats, and allanret4 across generations, languages, and amid evolving cultures, technologies, and world views. 

 

Her mixed form 2021 collection commissioned by the Anchorage Museum,Yugtarvik: A Tʌndrə’d Glimp, is available via the yugtarvik’s website at https://www.anchoragemuseum.org/major-projects/projects/chatter-marks/#journal (scroll down to Journal Issues). 

 

Yugtarvik: A Tʌndrə’d Glimp is also available for direct digital download: 

https://view.flipdocs.com/?ID=10017700_675590

Denise Low Postings | Supporting writers and their events

Denise Low, former Kansas Poet Laureate, is award-winning author of 30 books of prose and poetry. She blogs at Denise Low Postings with reviews, supporting writers and their events, and co-publishes Mammoth Publications, which specializes in Indigenous American authors.

http://deniselow.blogspot.com

Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging

University of Nebraska Press 

Edited by Diane Glancy and Linda Rodriguez 

Table of Contents and Contributors

Unpapered is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship. 

 

Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to “pretendians”—non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits—and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples’ professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.

César Love Poetry

Four Corners 

 

you share with me a picture of your sunset 

I would give one back to you 

But my balcony faces east

 

instead, I offer you 

A midnight 

dawn

And noon

 

three corners of the sky 

with your sunset, they are four 

one diamond of the night and day 

 

Orange 

In the grocery store aisle

one belly button orange with a scar 

others pristine, unblemished 

others soon to be sold

 

Between perfect sisters 

one unbidden sphere 

branded by two discolored inches 

not to be held 

not to be tasted

 

A globe passed over 

oceans never plunged 

forests never inhaled 

landscapes never painted

 

A world unfathomed 

with a navel and a canyon scar 

is the canyon east or west?

north or south? 

perhaps along her belly 

or across a breast

maybe against her cheek. 

 

Moonlight at Noon 

The Moon, My Shadow, and I make Three. – Li Po 

 

I would bake on this planet 

If not for the Moon I invited 

She agreed to let me keep her 

Tucked beneath my blouse 

Her cool face against my belly 

I lounge in her quiet 

I swim in her well 

I bloom in her sanity 

 

The Moon brought me a friend 

One who used to follow me 

She mimicked my every movement 

At first she flattered me 

Then she mocked me 

Finally, she ran away 

I screamed at her, 

Come back here! 

I tried to put a leash on her 

But she was too smart 

I threw a plum at her 

Of course, she thew one back 

We did this for months 

Then the Moon told me her name 

 

The Poet’s Tent 

North or South, she travels 

Always with her tent. 

On chosen ground, 

She slides its rods into the earth.

 

She places cloth on its frame. 

A cloth she imagined 

Something like a Mexican rebozo 

Something like an Amish quilt 

A cloth that exchanges colors 

That switches latticework 

Cloth that vibrates to the heartbeat of deer 

Cloth that answers the whispers of trees

 

The poet smooths the floor 

She unrolls her carpet 

Psychic knots detach from its tendrils: 

abandoned theories 

dropped desires 

jettisoned memories. 

They pulse on her floor. 

Soon to transform 

Soon to become 

feral opals 

protean metals 

iris crystals. 

She prepares the door 

Butterflies of every stripe arrive 

 

© César Love. All rights reserved. 

 

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

For Q

by Kim Shuck 

 

Pull on a different mountain range 

One leg at a time 

You time travel in poem 

He told me 

I've seen you do it 

We went relic spotting 

More than once 

Through the line up of the '53 Dodgers 

Before his heart was broken 

Before his heart was broken 

Memories never sit as neatly in a prong setting 

As a heart solitaire 

Memories never sit as neatly 

 

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