Poetry

A Choir of Misprisions

Gone, the quiet of toads. We used to see them half-burrowed in the powdery dirt. I liked their eyes, the nictating membrane. They seemed wry, a little smug. Like a girl who is double-jointed. Demonstrating that. At recess. Gone the articles, how they coddled their nouns. Or, sometimes, volunteered them. Did I mention the car…

At Pine Ridge Pow Wow Grounds

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back. —Bruce Springsteen   The bitter glue of snow makes the seven-hour trip take twelve. I’m crying—have been sobbing off and on for more than two days. I’m a pitiful, middle-aged mess. Goggles is in the trunk in a Hefty Bag and…

Chrysalis

Corpses push up through thawing permafrost, as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink; on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light undulate in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous as Venus at dawn? Yesterday I was about to seal a borax capsule angled up from the bottom of a decaying…

Alibi

I was waiting like a saint before the era of saints as she searched the racks for just the right threads. I was wondering after a hundred years, which is the body and which the clothes, although I would never ask her this. I was staring at the girls behind the window when she emerged…

Refugees in Our Own Land

The night is busy with the growth of stars. Above us peaceful. Shiyáázh, my son, fusses in his cradleboard. The protective rainbow shaped by his father arches over his face to protect him. In the dark sand below Monster Slayer’s archenemy rises again to pull us off this rock where we’ve taken refuge since winter’s…