Elegy for Yucca Fruit Woman

Without me, she said. Go—

I’m going to the rock

that once had wings. My life

rolls like rock clods

down a volcanic throat. Circle

the tips of big winds beneath

~

poised arms   wing bone,

surrounded & closing,

dust hinge. In upstroke, a slow

separate in landing then take off. To take

air, those inward whooshes   as if blessing

oneself. That sound of marrow leaving

the hollow.

~

pop. This woman knelt with women,

filling the earth: mush in tin

after tin, filled in with the breaking

sun. Kneeling down, she’d flap

dough at the wood pop,

her hands whirring. The air

bubbles rising with heat ready to—

Later she’d send me to 7-2-11

clenching quarters for—

~ 

at two points: they say a man flew

with a life feather, quill in hand

from the top of Shiprock, down

to the people, having slain

monster birds. Plumes

and all their vanes ending

in flight, humming after bird strike

~

A female eagle swooped east,

she once told me. It was like gold

whirring in the blue of my wind-

shield. I was in my truck, driving

and listening to Peyote songs

when it happened. I had never seen

so much dust.

~

When skin slats, layered

like stone then collapses—

a red grows gray. Aspen expands

to the hush

of this cedar-filled room. When

her neck grew heavy, she said,

The music helps me. Press play:

Hei hei ya wena hei nei, Hei hei ya wena hei nei;

Hei hei ya wena hei nei, nei; Hei hei ya wena hei nei;

Ya na hei ya na hei o weno hei nei;

Ya na hei ya na hei o weno hwoi na hei nei yo wei.

Mandala Journal – “Elegy for Yucca Fruit Woman” (Issue X; May 2014)

Leaping Ridge

The Crescent tells of a night that once poured

pale tiles in the sky. Like a pail tilt—

whoosh! Night blooms from Spanish Dagger, sores

of water in ash. There is no smoke spilt

or stitches stacked along the fibers: land to blue.

Wall where water carves a tear, a wilted

pluck or flower canal. Gourd-full spew

at the tongue. This is how a sheer quilt

freezes you in patch, in dune. Smother. Rock-

fold once cradled a mother in the hilt,

dipped her in descent. Yucca curl. Last gawk

went in search of her back, where after the jolt

her infant swayed: at every crumble of limb and mud,

such a small thud, thud, thud.

Perspectives – “Leaping Ridge” (2011)

Sunbeam

Around noontime on Highway 666, they are driving to Gallup. It is Pepper’s fifth birthday. My dad is working in Red Valley. Cloudless. He is probably running laps with students. Our two vehicles leave the Chuskas. I want a sucker. Cheii takes me. My little brother, Vince, and baby sister, Billie, are with mom, Pepper, Shelley Dee, and Aunt Vicky in her car. It is too bright today. Two weeks ago my mom dreamt of night birds chanting amidst juniper berries. Today, the land formations look like owls——Mom was smiling in the passenger seat, Billie in her arms. I walk out of the Little Water Trading Post with Minnie Mouse’s heart in my mouth. Cousin Shelley Dee was singing, “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” with my older sister Pepper. I sit alone, in the back of my Cheii’s truck, spreading rouge across my eyelids. Vince sips his root beer and Billie sleeps. It was May. I don’t understand the dream or the land—Grandma clenches my hand as we stand on the side of the road in Newcomb, watching the sun take them:

pepper-grass gathered in a pink plastic cup, here Daddy.

Essays on American Indians & Mormon History - "Sunbeam" (University of Utah Press 2019)

Monster Who Kicks People Down the Cliff 

All night we sat and he told me how once his mother had ridden a mare to death. He doesn’t usually do so: sit. Usually, it’s just a kick in the pants and all is gone to plummet, but tonight the sky emits a loneliness that only a monster could know. In a vale of cottonwoods, he started. There was a river where my mother would sit. And she bent her back for stones that looked like half of me. I remember settling like a rock inside her belly as she rode bareback at the edge of the river, regretting how she waited for the sun to warm the cliffs. Regretting the glint of her husband’s eyes at her longing— I’ve seen her clamber and wail when she went off to be with canyon walls! Later, she’d rock me to sleep: O wei o na o wei o naa, o wei o na o wei o na’oho, o wei o nei o naa o wei o wei naa. And as she went riding over, I can’t tell you how the sky shot me to pieces. How my insides lay like a wet mane over river rocks. I never saw the horse again. And now, my mother’s people know nothing but to skid me across water into the walls below. Your people, he finished and stood up:

When you pile the night as long as I have,

and wait for walls to sink then rise into sun,

you can never know morning like this—

Mandala Journal – “Monster Who Kicks People Down the Cliff” (Issue X; May 2014)

A Blood Letting (text)

it’s taken me to pulse down entire solace

of my truck, stars night roads, hush my own sister

she shoots right through

me, I saw from overpass

from mountains arches & rocks slats I’ve come to know

every ridgeline, tilt slit into earth these years

each formation winds, cries

into mouth a canyon, a set of eyes glass over from big wind

—incise— —fault line— —

did you pass me, I ask   oh, she cuts, there’s no time   

I gauze into my wrist, years or rivers

since our mother has died, years or blue since calm comes

down again, think how stars came to float

in bloodline: same through our wrists telling of the same

mother who left

us, who le t us—

and my sister le t 

me, kneeling roadside graveling, our veins  

no longer held together, when I see bypass

 

hold my wrist over

my heart just to feel

the beating

inside me

Thalia Magazine - "A Blood Letting" (Issue 3, January/February 2019)

Playground at Sunset

Prologue: It was nothing new; I’d always been without water on days like these. I’ve climbed desert mountains, mouth dry as sagebrush. I knew to blow into shallow pools of rainwater, caught by mesa pores, before drinking. And I could take myself to where a woman once brought up water from a rock. But as such a young child, I didn’t know how to ask for what was not in front of me.

I.

How many times I thought it was a treat

to be left for hours, to seesaw the day away,

to run through tires erected in the dirt, and

to sit inside them when the wind or rain got big.

 

I’d imagine sitting inside with Joey.

They say he kissed Heather in there.

Once he touched the burn on my forehead,

“Ouch. That must’ve hurt.” Never had a boy

touched me so tenderly, then we ran to the swings

and he gave me an underdog.

II.

Inside the tire, in its darkness we wait,

only my little sister is young enough to utter,

 

“When’s Daddy coming back?” When it’s done

howling or raining, we walk over to the edge

 

of the playground, and in the sandbox we write

the letters of our names—then smooth them out.

  

III.

Can I just say I got tired of waiting,

that it got too hard—the solidified salt

tear from inside.

Someone scratched

I love Tacy into the back of a door,

so the teacher shut me in a room

during recess because she thought

I carved my love for myself into a cabinet.

IV.

Even with my brother and sister’s weight combined,

 

it wasn’t enough—

to teeter-totter me into the air,

but that didn’t matter.

They were in sky,

yee-hawing with those clouds.

 

V.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lain   beneath bars: horizon-

tal ladder or bed   spring, with the wind

 

knocked out,    hard-packed dirt

& gravel or tile at my back.

 

In that position    I learn

sky’s weight, feel his hand. When   unable

 

to move or whimper,   lie—

plead thin   clouds to drop

 

and fill me,   fill my tongue with breath—

iron out    the stuttered heaving.

VI.

I learned not to answer my little sister

until sunset calmed our skin, ready

for a deep bruise to fill the night.

 

Soon.

American Indian Culture and Research Journal – “Playground Notes” (Vol. 36, No. 1)