Tag Archives: poetry

38. Homesick

Holding steel to their eyes

men walk upon the earth.

My hands atrophy in their thin space,

trapped between earth floors

tiled with squares

the size of 

their hearts

and ceilings of sky blue, even

rain seeds of men’s convenience.

Attending to my birth

in trees’ wind-switched limbs

my swelling maturation

in ruthless floodwaters embrace, I age

under earth’s continuum, within

the blood soil fortitude

of all my relatives, yet

hands prisoners trapped in steel

jaws of a civilization I so rarely

comprehend.

I am merely an embarrassment

I do not speak of

in the company of my ancestors.

My hands I try to draw back to myself

where they belong.

36. Harvest


 

In a small room without 

windows, I am 

stronger than wire

able to run in one straight line

across earth’s skin

for days

steady on wind’s wing.

When I wake

I am born

back into almost

nothing I want so

I live on mescal hearts

and tizwin words

while dirt talks to me about

waiting.

Mesquite beans ripen.

Every day is a shortening

icicle off my eaves.

35. fast cloud

you passed by the willows

where they bend brushing water.

that is where i remember you,

your brown shoulders moving

smoothly as deer dipping 

under young branches to meet me.

when you rode at dawn did you see me 

in the willow shadows watching your body

become the galloping horse’s body

moving across grass like a fast cloud?

now when wind shifts against hissing grasses

i hear your flute song calling down dusk,

healing my slashed arms still wanting to bleed

this life back into earth to follow you

on a trail to the stars.

do you ever pause to watch a fast cloud

chase the herd you left below?

do you see a woman standing still by the willows

watching spaces between branches,

waiting for you?

33. Fifty, for D

A herd of dust motes

is squeaking in sunlight

bars thrown across the room,

awakening all the sharp edges

of hard winter sun.

My bowels are weeping for you

for your hopeless hands 

married to your child

with webs of flesh.

He is not yours to keep.

Sunlight groans

across our days then

is gone,

each dust mote dancing

an individual samba.

31. Epitaph

Burn me in air

Throw me to wind

Sprinkle me across water.

Shark’s teeth, bear claw,

wrap me in comfort.

Envelope me in protective ecstasy

as I lie in my warm mother earth.

Free my spirit to wander whispering

to cliffs and buttes

for a take-off on wings of eagle.

Speak my name that it may roam unfettered.

Lay no stones above me that my vision

be not blocked.  

Set no belongings near me

that my load be light

as butterflies that follow.

We will meet soon in smoke

on hills of our mothers

and on banks of swift creeks

that cleanse our bones.

Know not regret.

Cradle grief but rejoice in freedom

and life beginning and ending in circles

of growth and hope.

30. As If Dichotomous Things Can’t Sit

I like Indian country

looking like my studio

where only the right things matter,

easier than feeling

an equivalent desperation–

shudders through alcohol and

through my terrible hands.

Life is a mess.  It just is.

I like the way my breathing grows

deep and low

when a horse presses a forehead

hard into my shoulder

as I turn away.

The weight of that warmth.

Because they are always bigger

than I am

and stronger.

The way they are so much stronger.

I am drawn to gutters and

wrecking balls, explosives

powdering history.

I walk right into his arms,

time after time.

That love as an interior force

can be so elastic …

29. The Disaster of Safety’s Sake


She was born in the cave

of suburbia and grew

like a virus, virulent

and contractable

within sterile corridors 

fortified with split levels.

Every dream involves 

screaming primary colors,

sunlight hotter than Sonora

on her fingernails.

Every dream involves cacti:

the torture

of never touching it.

All alone she 

chews on her wrists

in stages,

coyote gnawing,

trapped tight.