Continuing Native American Heritage Month--"At the Stomp Dance"

"Contemporary Stomp Dance" by Marcine Quenzler

On the last day of Native American Heritage Month, I said I wanted to extend it at least to the end of the year, since it was the only time mainstream America paid any attention to or acknowledged that there were still Natives living in this contemporary world beside them, that we weren't just historical and extinct. That last may just be wishful thinking on some parts, since we are so inconvenient as reminders of the results of a history of genocide and ethnic cleansing that mainstream America chooses to forget.

Today's poem is about the stomp dance, which is the Cherokee equivalent of

church services--never forgetting that many Cherokee can be and are active in both traditional Cherokee ceremonies and Christian church services. I wrote this poem based on the stomp dances of my childhood down in Oklahoma. In it, the women all use shell shakers made of turtle shells. These were and are treasured heirlooms, handed down many generations through the line of female ancestors. Today, women are much more likely to use tin can shell shakers as more environmentally sustainable. The original

turtle shells were harvested when turtles were in great abundance and the turtles were eaten by the family before the shells were cleaned and used in ceremony and then handed down for generations. As the environment has changed and turtles become less abundant due to habitat loss and death by automobile, the Cherokee have adapted, not wanting to hunt them into endangered status.

Since I have lived away from the Cherokee Nation in adulthood, I have seldom had an opportunity to attend a stomp dance. When I do, they are not as elaborate as those of my childhood, usually no longer including the stickball games that used to accompany those of my childhood. However, the Cherokee stomp dance is still going strong in all the aspects of ceremony that make it so important. There is still the food, the focus on clans, the sacred fire, the men handing down the songs through the generations, the women with their shell shakers setting the rhythm of the dance, the spiral of prayer to the Creator. It is still as powerful as ever and as beautiful.

AT THE STOMP DANCE

Cars, trucks, all day coming.

First the leaders and their helpers

set up the cook shed,

clean, rake the ball and dance grounds, 

refurbish the seven brush arbors

circling the dance ground—

helpers from each clan do this.

The women bring hot and cold dishes

from home, begin to cook and cover tables

while men build the sacred fire,

centered in the dance ground’s circle

to reflect the sun.

The crowd grows.

Flirting, catcalling between young men and women

turns into challenge. Head for the ball ground,

men grabbing ballsticks, women hands free—

all the better to rest on a hip while calling a sassy retort.

Game on, men against women,

each plays by their own set of rules

to much laughter and hooting.

The sad-eyed carved fish swimming through the air

on top of the pole in the center of the ball ground

watches benevolently

while the ball whizzes past

or—success!—strikes it.

Older women and others not playing call out

encouragement and laughing insults.

So do the older men, sitting in their lawn chairs.

All the while, final preparations continue

for the main event, the dance.

Women work on old cowboy boots,

making sure their turtleshell rattles

handed down the chain of daughters,

are securely fastened to the split-open tops of the boots.

They try them on and stamp their feet hard

to check the sound of the pebbles in the rattles,

to make sure they won’t come loose.

Children are everywhere underfoot,

watching ball game and sacred fire,

sniffing around the cook shed,

playing tag and hide-and-seek

outside the ring of clan shelters.

The elders of each clan—

Ani-Wahya (Wolf), Ani-Kawi (Deer), Ani-Tsisqua (Bird),

Ani-Gilahi (Long Hair), Ani-Sahani (Blue), Ani-Wadi (Paint),

and Ani-Gatagewi (Wild Potato)—

settle into each brush arbor

as the cooks call out that the food is ready.

Clan members bring food to the elders,

join them or eat with families, friends.

Now, the food is eaten and dishes cleaned.

Now, the turtledoves are calling as they nestle in to sleep.

Now, the fireflies are taking to the air with children chasing.

Now, the sun has set and the sacred fire brings back its light.

Now, the women put on their rattle-sewn boots.

Now, the old lead singer calls out the beginning,

Now, his brothers and nephews echo their response.

Now, his sisters and nieces step into the circle beside them.

Now, the women set the rhythm with their fast turtleshelled feet.

Now, the circle spirals out from the fire.

Now, the dance can begin.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

Poems for Native American Heritage Month--"The Last Beloved Woman" and "Learning Cherokee"

I have been quite ill for months (in 3 months of being unable to swallow or eat much, I lost 50 pounds that the steroids had put on me ) and was coping with serious injury to my  right shoulder, as well as steroid myopathy stealing my ability to stand or walk much, before that. As a consequence, I have neglected this blog for too many months.

Here it is the end of Native American Heritage Month, and I have not posted one essay or poem for it--when I normally post one several times a week throughout the month. So, today, I'll post two poems for the last day of Native American Heritage Month as a bare minimum I can do for the one month a year the rest of the country remembers we are still here. And perhaps, on my own, I will extend Native American Heritage Month to the rest of the year on this blog.

She Speaks for Her Clan by Dorothy Sullivan

This painting is one of my favorites--"She Speaks for Her Clan" by Dorothy Sullivan--and it illustrates Cherokee clan mothers, and for Blue Clan in the center, it pictures Wilma Mankiller as a Beloved Woman. This first poem deals with Beloved Women and the last Beloved Woman of the Cherokee before Removal split the tribe into three different nations. The second poem is a history of Cherokee encounters with Europeans in the guise of a language lesson.

THE LAST BELOVED WOMAN

Mother-clanned, the Cherokee towns,

farms, and orchards, before all were stolen

by those who forced the People on the long dread march west,

belonged to the women, as did the children.

Nanye-hi, in 1738 born

a daughter of the Wolf Clan,

married Kingfisher, bore two children.

During the Battle of Taliwa,

she took her dead husband’s place,

avenged his death, rallied warriors to victory,

became a ghi gua.

Ghi gua, or Beloved Woman,

title given by the seven clans

to women who had served the People

as warriors and mothers both.

Given a swan’s wing and special place in council,

the ghi gua even held a voting seat

on the Council of Chiefs. With their swan wings,

they had the final say

over whether the town went to war.

Today I watch women go to a war foolish as many,

often leaving babies behind.

Something’s out of synch, though.

It’s still old men, who’ve never set foot on battlefield

nor suckled a babe, making decisions of war and peace.

Nanye-hi married again, a white man named Ward.

Nancy Ward, the ghi gua, respected

among Cherokees and settlers,

warned settlements of impending attacks, 

to prevent complete war,

negotiated treaties, all later broken.

At the end of life, settlers forced

Nanye-hi from her home to die before the Trail of Tears.

Trying to fit the white man’s mold,

the Cherokee shed their councils.

No place for Beloved Women.

Nanye-hi Nancy Ward was the last ghi gua.

We need women with swan wings.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

LEARNING CHEROKEE

O si yo. Hello.

To hi tsu? How are you?

Di qho ye ni u si wha. My hands are empty.

Ga do u s di hi a? What is this?

Gi ga ge i. Red.

U ne ga. White.

A ma. Water.

Wa do Thank you.

Yo ne ga. White man.

Nu la. Hurry.

Yv wi. The people.

Ga tli da. Arrow.

Ga yo tli gadO hi. Just a little land.

A ge ya. Woman.

A ni s ga ya. Men.

A sa no. Dress.

Qua na hl gv ni. Peach trees.

Ga yo tli gado hi. Just a little land.

A ha ni. Field.

Yv gi. Nail.

Ga yo tli gado hi. Just a little land.

Tsa ga se sde sdi! Be careful!

A de la. Money.

Tla hv. Absolutely not.

Ni gad a gado a! All your land!

Gi ga. Blood.

E hi sti yu. Pain.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications, 2018)

Whitewashing History--A Native American Heritage Month Essay

Our current president has a habit of insulting Native America, not only by calling Senator Warren “Pocahontas,” but by installing a portrait of Andrew Jackson, architect of Indian Removal and of genocide, in the Oval Office in the place of honor before bringing in Native Code Talkers to honor them for their contribution to the war effort in World War II. The worst, however, is when he says, “our ancestors tamed a continent,” and “we are not going to apologize for America,” referring to the destruction of millions of Native lives.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tame-continent-america-945121?fbclid=IwAR1_NFFTv2-8BaoXNVFMlOWoYrnS_7MMmVofXMSQD5SesSqV7tQdu_mxQIg

“Our ancestors tamed a continent,” of course, refers to the idea  of the North American continent as an empty wilderness, devoid of human life, a place ripe for the taking. Of course, our current president is not famous for his intelligence or his knowledge, but this concept of the “Virgin Soil” has had plenty of play among academics, as well.

This kind of misguided and, in some cases, deliberately dishonest, information is why I always caution my students in workshops and classes I teach on writing about other cultures to regard the works of outside academics as questionable and to give greater weight to first-person narratives from people within that culture or diaries, letters, writings, such as poetry or fiction, from people within that culture. The paragraph below is in every talk I give on this subject and every lesson in any online class that I teach and speaks directly to that issue.

“As a part of this second danger, one thing you must remember about doing research on other cultures in books, libraries, on the internet, is that much of it is wrong, accidentally or willfully. Accidentally, because journalists, anthropologists, other scholars, and explorers may have misinterpreted what they saw or heard or because—and this was common—their informants deliberately misinformed them to protect their people or to protect their own source of whatever the white man was providing them. Consequently, even primary sources from past times can be contaminated if they are “as told to” or are translated. Willfully, because a lot of that research was done by people, usually white men, who had an agenda that placed wealthy white male Europeans at the pinnacle of creation and everyone and everything else downhill from that, which led to eugenics and a lot of other horrid, stupid things. So there's your second caveat: You can do your research and still get it wrong in some way.”

This idea that there was no Native genocide because disease alone killed all the Indigenous peoples on the continent, leaving it conveniently vacant for Europeans is a race-based “intuitive” theory from the 1970s that has been refuted since the end of the 20^thcentury by scholars actually working with primary documents and other evidence. The “virgin soil thesis,” based on the belief that Natives’ lack of immunities and their inept healers were responsible for their downfall, was propounded by Alfred Crosby in 1976. This theory was quite popular for a time early in the last half of the 20^th century because it placed all the responsibility for the massive death counts among Indigenous peoples after European arrival on the Indigenous people themselves because they were genetically weak, lacking in acquired immunity, and lacking in competent medical care, rather than on the violence waged against them by Europeans from the very beginning of contact and continuing into the early 20^th century.

As David S. Jones points out in “Virgin Soils Revisited” in The William and Mary Quarterly(October 2003), “Perhaps the idea that Indian depopulation can be explained by the Indians' lack of immunity took hold because it served an ideological purpose. White physicians in South Africa, for instance, used virgin soil theory to explain the prevalence of tuberculosis among African mine workers. … theories of immunological determinism can still assuage Euroamerican guilt over American Indian depopulation, whether in the conscious motives of historians or in the semiconscious desires of their readers. … the epidemics among American Indians, despite their unusual severity, were caused by the same forces of poverty, social stress, and environmental vulnerability that cause epidemics in all other times and places.”

David Stannard argued in American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York, 1992) that "by focusing almost entirely on disease, by displacing responsibility for the mass killing onto an army of invading microbes, contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent."

Paul Kelton, author of Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation’s Fight Against Smallpox, 1518-1824 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015) and "Avoiding the Smallpox Spirits: Colonial Epidemics and Southeastern Indian Survival," Ethnohistory, 50 (Fall 2003), is yet another of the many scholars who have gone to actual primary documents and other evidence to examine this thesis as it pertained to the Cherokee Nation and found that many epidemics were not as severe as had been claimed or assumed and that the Cherokee healers and spiritual beliefs were as effective as the primitive medicines of the Europeans in dealing with smallpox. He also discusses the part that the overwhelming violence—the bitter wars that decimated population, the actions of the white settler armies in destroying towns, homes, farms, and stored harvests in an attempt to starve the Cherokee, the forced surrender of huge swathes of territory necessary for a hunting-gathering existence—played in rendering the surviving remnant of Cherokees susceptible to smallpox and other illnesses.

As far as the idea that the Europeans thought the continents were empty, there is such abundance of evidence of the contrary that the idea that academics would put that forth as fact in university classrooms and scholarly publications is ludicrous. The history of the United States is filled with statesmen lamenting the fact that American Indians own the land they want and with their plans and chicanery to force them to sell or give it or to just force them off the land. That relentless push westward that came to be called Manifest Destiny in the 1840s continued from the first landings of Europeans on the Atlantic Seaboard through the war with Tecumseh, the Indian Removal Act and many Trails of Tears (killing tens of thousands—one would think that alone would qualify for designation as ethnic cleansing or genocide), to the Indian Wars of the 19^th century, while in California, the Spanish mission system devastated the Native population, and when the Americans took over, they offered official government bounties on Indian heads. Not exactly the acts of people who thought the continent was vacant.

As far as various academics’ statements that the destruction of the native population could not be genocide because it was not “deliberate or on purpose,” I offer a tiny sampling of the quotations from speeches, letters, newspaper articles, and other documents to be easily found in a search through American history. The researcher will easily find many, many more quotations from Franklin, Jefferson, Monroe, Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln, and many other Founding Fathers and presidents, as well as governors and other civic leaders, all speaking of the need to wipe out the Indigenous population of the continent.

“The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” – General Phil Sheridan

“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under god’s heaven to kill Indians! Scalps are what we are after… I long to be wading in gore!” – Rev. John M. Chivington, co-founder of the University of Denver and leader of the Sand Creek Massacre

"Civilization or death to all American savages." – Major James Norris

“Discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest.” – Chief Justice John Marshall

“The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.” – General George Washington, orders to troops, 1779 [Those captured prisoners of every age and sex were then sold as slaves to the West Indies.]

This erasure of the destruction of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas is a pervasive problem in this country. Witness the proponents of the virgin soil thesis of the past century, who were the modern versions of the Puritans rejoicing, after one massacre, that they hadn’t had to commit another due to disease and starvation, thanks to the mighty hand of God. The history of this country is a history of broken treaties with Indian nations, a history of massacres and forced removals that killed many thousands, a history of continuous greed for the land and other possessions of the Indigenous people and violence and wars to obtain what was so desired. The history of this country is a history of theft and slavery, a history of prisoner of war camps called reservations (that Hitler studied and used as models for his concentration camps—he admired the efficiency of the U.S. genocide of its Native population and emulated it in his own Final Solution), a history of official bounties on Indian heads, skins, and scalps. The history of this country is a history of kidnapping children and imprisoning them in boarding “schools,” rife with physical and emotional abuse—“Kill the Indian to save the man!”—a history of forced sterilization and medical experimentation without consent. If you look at it openly, it adds up to something that can hardly be called anything but ethnic cleansing and genocide.

So, of course, as a country, we don’t look at it openly—and when someone forces us to face it, we cry, “Not true! Get over it! Victim studies! PC,” anything we can to make the awful truth go away and be buried once again. Still, it happened, and the results of it remain with us, especially embedded in Native communities and lives. American popular culture is still in the grip of Manifest Destiny and “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” with the enshrinement of the Hollywood Western as one of our great art forms. I would hope for better from academia, however, where the truth is supposed to have value above belief in American exceptionalism, but I am often disappointed.

This situation is a perfect example of why we need ethnic studies classes—and why they should be part of the required core of classes and not electives that only a few students will take. Our citizens need to know our history, to know what we’ve done as a country, to know how we got here today, to know the truth and not the photoshopped Hollywood version of who we really are. Without that knowledge, we will continue to make the same mistakes, doomed to repeat the past we choose not to know.

A Poem for Native American Heritage Month--"Grandmother's Basket"

For Native American Heritage Month, here is a poem about my grandmother, who was so influential in my life, even though she died when I was thirteen. Like a lot of families, mine was torn apart by divorce when I was young, and as great as the loss of my father was, I think the loss of his family, my grandmother and aunt, was even more traumatic. These women had been the strong stable base of my childhood while both parents were chaotic children. Once the divorce occurred, I lost that stability and their wisdom, but never their love. Fortunately, as an adult, I could and did seek out my aunt while she was still alive and rebuilt the family connection. Unfortunately, my grandmother was long gone by then.

GRANDMOTHER’S BASKET

I loved Grandmother’s baskets when I was small.

They had intricate patterns and figures

woven into them in brown, black,

yellow, red, and orange.

She had different sizes and shapes,

used them for storage rather than display.

My favorite was in reds and yellows with a black border.

It looked to me as if woven of fire and grasses.

I would climb into cupboards, find one,

and ask why she didn’t keep it out on a tabletop

where everyone who came in could admire it.

“These aren’t the best ones,” she said

as she fingered baskets that looked beautiful to me.

“We used to make them from rivercane,

which makes a better basket and dyes the best,

but they rounded us up in concentration camps

and drove us on a death march to a new land

that didn’t have our old plants like rivercane

so now we use buckbrush and honeysuckle.”

Grandmother shrugged. “You make do.”

I asked her to teach me how to make a basket

like the one I loved with feathers of fire

along its steep sides. She shook her head.

“It’s a lot of hard work.

First, we need black walnut, blood root,

pokeweed, elderberry. Yellow root’s the best yellow,

but blood root will have to do.

They’ve dug all the yellow root

for rich people’s medicines, call it goldenseal.

Got to have our dyestuffs first.

Got to forage for most of them.

It takes lots of trips, out and back,

to get enough to make good colors.”

I knew I could do that and said so.

She laughed. “You’ve got to know what to pick

or dig or gather. It’s like with my medicines.

Can’t just go taking any old weed.”

I pointed out that I was learning from her

about the Cherokee medicine plants. She just shook her head.

“It’s not the same. I grow most of those.

Haven’t taken you out for the wild ones yet

because you’re too little still. Same for dye plants.”

I nagged at her for days, begging her to teach me

so I could have a basket of my own.

I had in mind that amazing fire-flickering basket.

I wanted to make one just like that.

My visit was over without her ever giving in.

I was used to Grandmother’s strength of will.

I knew I would have to try harder next time.

There was no next-time visit.

My mother had always hated her mother-in-law.

Now, she won the battle to keep us away.

Our relationship poured out in letters

until my mother destroyed them,

refused further correspondence.

Years later, Grandmother wrote me—

a letter that slipped past my mother’s scrutiny—

that she was making a basket

one last time for me.

I knew she was very ill,

soon to die.

I don’t know who got the beautiful baskets

when Grandmother died, especially the one

that I loved when I was small.

Her sister and niece who cared for her

in her last illness, I suppose.

That’s fair. My parents had divorced by then,

and my mother allowed no contact

with that family. But

a lumpy, brown-paper-bag-wrapped package

with Grandmother’s shaky, spidery handwriting

arrived for me after her death.

My mother opened it first and laughed.

I stood waiting eagerly to snatch up

the last thing my grandmother would ever give me.

“Look at that,” Mother said with more laughter.

“That ugly old thing’s supposed to be a basket,

I think. She sure lost her knack for that

at the end, didn’t she?”

When I was small and visiting, I knew

Grandmother already had arthritis

in her hands. That’s probably why

she wouldn’t teach me to make baskets—

because she didn’t have the dexterity any longer

to make the kind she once had.

I still have that simple handled basket

of vines (probably honeysuckle).

The whole thing is dyed black.

There are no intricate patterns of flames

or anything else. It’s just solid black.

I can see her plodding out to gather

butternuts for the black dye

and to pull the honeysuckle vines,

stripping off the leaves.

I can see her gnarled hands

painstakingly weaving under and over,

no fancy twills or double-woven sides.

Hard enough to shape

a shallow but sturdy gathering basket

for her long-unseen granddaughter.

All these years later

I have my own herb garden

where many of her medicine plants grow.

When I gather them to dry for teas and poultices,

I use that black vine basket.

I think it will last forever.

Published in Dark Sister (Mammoth Publications,, forthcoming)

To a Young Native Artist

I had great news yesterday. My next book of poetry, DARK SISTER, which is dear to my heart but languished unsubmitted while I learned how to navigate the new world of commercial mystery fiction and then the bizarre landscape of cancer treatments, will be published in 2018. 

Unfortunately, though, something happened that took the edge off that joy. For the third time in recent months, a gifted Native woman writer who had been achieving wonderful success was attacked from within the Native community over identity issues. Identity is a fraught issue in the Native community, but the crazy thing in each of these cases was that these women are all documented citizens of their respective (and different) nations.

We're all too used to having mainstream American society, especially publishing, tell us Native writers that we're not “Indian enough,” because we don't/won't write in the tropes and stereotypes they expect or think the readers expect from Native writers, because we “don't look Native” to their eyes (not like Iron Eyes Cody's great masquerade), because we live in urban areas rather than on reservations (ignoring the fact that over 70% of Natives live in urban areas—in large part due to US government policies of the mid-20th century). There's a special sting, though, when it comes from our own community.

Success as a Native writer is not a zero-sum game. When one of us achieves success, that opens eyes and doors for more of us. We're surrounded by a mainstream literary community with a few staunch allies, a lot of often destructive ignorance about us, and a surprising number of people with knives out when it comes to us and our writing and needs. We shouldn't be carving up our own and tossing bloody pieces out to appease them. We should be celebrating and lifting up our own writers who attain success and supporting each other as we all work toward greater things for each of us individually and our community as a whole.

A few weeks ago, I wrote this poem and posted it on Facebook, and I think it's relevant to this discussion.

To a Young Native Artist

How many people made love, or just had sex, and survived,
often under bleakest circumstances,
to create your unique spirit and body.
How many women gave birth, suckled,
and nurtured babes in violence and in injury and illness,
hoping for a future they would never see.
Every one of us born is a victory
against colonialism and attempted genocide.
You are the culmination of all those who loved
in the midst of hate. You are the resistance.
You are hope made flesh.
Never let this society dictate what you create.
Your ancestors have given you gifts. Use them.

Final Poem for Native American Heritage Month and Standing Rock

We are ending Native American Heritage Month in a few days, and throughout the entire month, militarized police have been violently attacking the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, leaving hundreds with hypothermia and injuries, especially one elder in cardiac arrest, one young woman with a torn retina, and one young woman with an arm that she may lose, even after several surgeries. This poem is one I wrote about rivers and the concept of river, and perhaps it will offer a different way of looking at these great entities of creation beyond the concept of commodity or barrier to profit. Too often we forget that water is truly life.

WHAT RIVER SAYS

The Cherokee call me Long Man,

yun wi gun hi ta,

because my body stretches and unravels

with my head in the mountains

and my feet resting in the ocean.

I constantly speak words of wisdom

to those who can understand me—

fewer every day.

It takes a quality of attention

fit for magicians or poets.

I have much to tell those

who expend the time and energy to listen.

I have seen so many things.

I know the history of rain

intimately, leaning on the world

to feel it on my skin

and take it inside me

to swell my body. Maybe,

they should have called me Long Woman.

I remember when

the mountains were home only to gods.

I knew your ancestors,

now tangled in the ground.

I swallowed my share and more.

I have seen innumerable generations

living into their deaths.

I am acquainted with the bones of earth,

ancient as the word of God

and stronger by far.

Men have tried forever

to change me and chain me,

but I still wander where I will

when I grow tired of being tame.

I remain the promise of tomorrow,

the hope of new growth

that haunts the night with hypnotic murmurs

and softens the edge between act and dream.

When all hope has fled,

come to me.

Published in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, 2015

Dreaming Fox--A Poem for Native American Heritage Month

I wanted to put another poem up for Native American Heritage Month, and I decided to post this one.

I’ve always taken for granted that I could see more of the natural world’s plants and animals, even in the city, than most other people I know here, who seem totally oblivious to a pair of golden eagles stunt-flying on the thermals overhead or the waddle of a beaver across a grassy knoll to his creek home. I know I owe this gift to my grandmother and aunt and uncle who taught me when I was young to pay attention to the land around me and its plant and animal inhabitants—and thus vastly enriched the rest of my life.

When the rest of my family erupted in chaos and violence, focusing on the natural world of which I was a part saw me through the pain and desperation. Nothing pulls me out of despair like going to water to see the dawn in and watch the dance of the real world behind the shabby drapery of made-up, pretend, commodified daily existence. 

DREAMING FOX

Early on a Sunday walking

past a bank drive-through on a hill

above a creek running through the city

surrounded by a narrow band of wild growth

I see him and freeze

big dog fox stopped at the sight of me

one foot still in the air

tail of fire just brushing the uphill

shrubbery from which he came

we stand and stare

unable to move or breathe

his eyes staring into mine

against a background

murmur of morning traffic

neither of us supposed to be here

not me at this just-after-dawn-in-summer hour

not him in the middle of the city

curiosity more than fear

behind his big eyes I had always

thought foxes had small close-together eyes

from cartoons or wildlife films or something

like that but his are set attractively

distant from each other

an intelligent face staring

me down wanting me to turn

and run from the predator

he must have a den nearby

with mate and kits so he will stand

against me forever

if need be he must be afraid

he knows humans are dangerous

to his kind especially

if he lives here in the heart of the city he must

dread the moment he will have to take

me on so many times his size

and probably with noisy metal weapons

against his needle teeth and claws

feeble in the world of cars motorcycles sirens

thrown rocks gunshots in this neighborhood he will

do it nonetheless I watch him set down his foot

lightly the muscles of his haunches tense

to spring in one final hopeless suicidal

attack to damage and drive me off

away from the den down among the brush

on the banks of the urban creek

hidden deep among the willows

I wish I could follow him down there

to see his mate and babies

he is right to fear me and attack

that human curiosity impulse to know

to somehow own experience fatal

to him if someone less harmless sees

and follows he hunkers down on his tail

silent no warning growl prepared

to launch himself through the air at my throat

only he will not be able to leap

that high from the lower ground

where he stands he will have to settle

for chewing my waist and legs

taking pity on us both

I back away slowly still

holding his vulpine gaze he turns back

to the shelter of the woods with only

one long look back

to make sure I don’t follow

to make sure I was real

one flash of movement and all trace

of red gone only undergrowth he might

never have stood and stared into my human eyes

so early on a Sunday morning

in the heart of the city

leaving us both to wonder

if we dreamed he of a human

who did no harm me of a fox

who did not run improbable dreams

intertwined

© Linda Rodriguez 2016

Native American Heritage Month--A Poem for Standing Rock and #NoDAPL

I've been so frigging mad about the news coverage of the Standing Rock protests. The media, for the most part, can't be bothered to go out and actually investigate what's actually going on. No lattes out on the prairie. So they just take the word of the lying sheriff and governor. After NPR's recently, I just blew, and my poor husband had to listen. Finally, I decided to try to tame the anger in form. So, a sestina for Standing Rock.

NO MORE (SESTINA FOR STANDING ROCK)

I have run out of time

and patience with news coverage so

lazy and biased with a bow

always to

the company owners, powerful and rich,

and to what they want said.

It never matters what my people have said

again and again. Every time

government or corporate forces, so

violent and powerful, require us to bow

in submission, and we won't, the rich

dictate what's broadcast—and written, too.

When I try to explain to

well-meaning white friends, they've said,

“But disorder!” to which I reply each time,

“But oppression!” and sow

seeds of doubt in their comfort. The bough

must break some time and dump the rich

into the mud with the rest of us. The rich

tapestry of cultures that we are can't be reduced to

only WASP—Native, Black, Latino said

to be lesser, negligible, inferior. Each time

I hear this, the fire of anger grows within, so

hot and fierce. It's time for the ruling class's farewell bow.

So long we've stayed peaceful. Soon, it may be time for bow

and lance and rifle, if the rich

can't be compelled to lift the boot, too

sure of their own power to listen to what we've said.

They don't realize it, but they're running out of time.

In arrogance, they rip the fabric of the nation we sew

back together in new, shiny shapes, so

colorful, strange, stronger, tied with the bright bow

of human dignity and rich

gleam of equality and justice. To

those who've always had power and said

to the rest of us, “Give us time

to dole out bits of freedom,” we say, “No,” so...

You've run out of time. Now, reap what you sow.

We'll no longer bow in submission to

the demands of the white and rich. Hear what we've said.

© Linda Rodriguez 2016