English Project

Carrizo

BY CRISOSTO APACHE

For Edgar

The submarine’s inside was dim.

— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, tr. by Will Petersen

in my youth, I hitched a ride to San Diego, across

chirping desert and distant night, I gazed upon a slow-moving

dark, encasing a convex cerulean cavity

each night, I stood beneath the sky for hours mesmerized

at the perplex reformatory, twinkling lights of broken

glass fragments spreading against a glistening sunset

a faceless man behind a lost reflection of glass

at a drive-up window informs me,

too bad, you know nothing of your own past

how far will I walk against the night?

conforming to a captivity I had never realized

some years later, under the kitchen table, they all huddle,

as the rampage continues toward the back of the house,

a clash of debris from the other room recoils

and broken sounds escape the barricade of doors

I remember I returned in 1970,

all they remember is me sitting at the edge of my bed,

with the war still in my hands

Anasazi

BY TACEY M. ATSITTY

How can we die when we're already

prone to leaving the table mid-meal

like Ancient Ones gone to breathe

elsewhere. Salt sits still, but pepper's gone

rolled off in a rush. We've practiced dying

for a long time: when we skip dance or town,

when we chew. We've rounded out

like dining room walls in a canyon, eaten

through by wind—Sorry we rushed off;

the food wasn't ours. Sorry the grease sits

white on our plates, and the jam that didn't set—

use it as syrup to cover every theory of us.

When Roots Are Exposed

BY ESTHER BELIN

I.

The empty of stomach

manifests silence

a stillness

that levels

coffee in a cup

and in a respectful manner

allows steam to penetrate

the surface.

Reversal of action

has created my sandstone canyon

rooted cedar and sage at my feet.

This movement is where

a tranquility stems.

II.

When my child creates

bubbles through a soapy wand,

I occupy the action of fate

that bursts the perfect form.

A halcyon absorbed

nesting within

the existence of the form

that no longer exists.

The formless form

is where my mind floats.

III.

It is easy to give form

especially with English words

a promotion of mechanical ligaments

binding spirit with assembly-fabricated molds.

Just as my hair poses an appendage of my brain

my tongue poses an appendage of my heart.

I cannot classify this thought as a typewritten symbol.

An ideogram of essence

cultivates my stillness to action.

ANWR

BY SHERWIN BITSUI

When we are out of gas,

a headache haloes the roof,

darkening the skin of everyone who has a full tank.

I was told that the nectar of shoelaces,

if squeezed hard enough,

turns to water and trickles from the caribou’s snout.

A glacier nibbled from its center

spiders a story of the Southern Cross,

twin brothers

dancing in the back room lit with cigarettes

break through the drum’s soft skin—

There bone faces atlas

a grieving century.

Massacre Song Foundation

Launch Audio in a New Window

BY TREVINO L. BRINGS PLENTY

Chorus rumbles constant throughout night

storied roots curl around obsidian

arrowhead dissolved into shaft groove

you unbuckle the stems from your leg

Coda’s systemic sameness & design

monsoon shovels clay onto hand

pushes up arm, pericardial shift dams

its build you prostrate in an office chair

Massacre song foundation roll fields hypoxic

grasses scribe a hill slope horripilation

a pronghorn horns the air stirs skin cells

Unpeel bison hide bundle

piece stem into its chamber

pillar a room with red cedar smoke

Confusion forms to recall its palms air push

different if not warranted you hear only

past reflections bounce off the keystone surface:

a beast skips on a butte

thrown across a wheeling prairie

oak shadow outline casts to your interior

walls angled from captured leaf veins

Unmoved trailer homes center scene

cottonwoods bend your head

you thumb forward then walk

the bear was born

BY JULIAN TALAMANTEZ BROLASKI

the bear was born

thrown from its side by killer-of-enemies

its rage scratched open several rivers and the gulf of mexico

an aspect so to speke

made fulsomely as it were one

whos habitat

full somely made

reaches all its leaves and feathers to the smoky air

a tanager on an elm in oahu

really reminded of the grand canyon

by the souvenir mug of the muleskinner

& the horse & the name angel

Prints

BY JOSEPH BRUCHAC

Seeing photos

of ancestors

a century past

is like looking

at your own

fingerprints—

circles

and lines

you can't

recognize

until someone else

with a stranger's eye

looks close and says

that's you.

Combing

BY GLADYS CARDIFF

Bending, I bow my head

and lay my hands upon

her hair, combing, and think

how women do this for

each other. My daughter’s hair

curls against the comb,

wet and fragrant— orange

parings. Her face, downcast,

is quiet for one so young.

I take her place. Beneath

my mother’s hands I feel

the braids drawn up tight

as piano wires and singing,

vinegar-rinsed. Sitting

before the oven I hear

the orange coils tick

the early hour before school.

She combed her grandmother

Mathilda’s hair using

a comb made out of bone.

Mathilda rocked her oak wood

chair, her face downcast,

intent on tearing rags

in strips to braid a cotton

rug from bits of orange

and brown. A simple act

Preparing hair. Something

women do for each other,

plaiting the generations.

Emplumada

BY LORNA DEE CERVANTES

When summer ended

the leaves of snapdragons withered

taking their shrill-colored mouths with them.

They were still, so quiet. They were

violet where umber now is. She hated

and she hated to see

them go. Flowers

born when the weather was good - this

she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches

daring their ways above the fence, and further,

two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other,

arcing their bodies in grim determination

to find what is good, what is

given them to find. These are warriors

distancing themselves from history.

They find peace

in the way they contain the wind

and are gone.

Sometimes I Feel Like All Indians

BY CHRYSTOS

For Kelly Morgan

ever do is die

Her brother was thrown out the window

by Black men he was drinking with

His cousin was stabbed near the store

She got shot

Nobody knows where he ended up

She hasn’t heard from her brother in 17 years

He killed himself when his wife left

Her son was hit by a car of drunk whites

Her uncle went off a cliff in the dark

Her grandmother died in the hospital

because they gave her the wrong medicine

Her baby was born addicted & died

My brother died as a baby

Her mother died of an overdose

She doesn’t know how her mother died

but no one has seen her for a long time

She was put in foster care because her parents died in a car wreck

I close my eyes & keep praying

sometimes there’s nothing to do

but brush back the tears

& keep on folding the laundry

A Mighty Pulverizing Machine

BY LAURA DA'

To each orphaned child—so long as you remain close enough to walk to

your living kin you will dance, feast, feel community in food. This cannot

stand. Eighty acres allotted.

To each head of household—so long as you remember your tribal words

for village you will recollect that the grasses still grow and the rivers still

flow. So long as you teach your children these words they will remember

as well. This we cannot allow. One hundred and sixty acres allotted.

To each elder unable to till or hunt—so long as your old and injurious habits

sing out over the drum or flicker near the fire you cripple our reward. We

seek to hasten your end. Eighty acres allotted.

To each widowed wife—so long as you can make your mark, your land

may be leased. A blessing on your mark when you sign it and walk closer

to your favored white sister. Eighty acres allotted.

To each full blood—so long as you have an open hand, we shall fill it with

a broken ploughshare. One hundred and sixty acres allotted.

To each half blood, each quarter strain—so long as you yearn for the broken

ploughshare, you will be provided a spade honed to razor in its place.

When every acre of your allotment has been leased or sold, you will turn it

on yourself. From that date begins our real and permanent progress.

Amelia’s First Ski Run

BY NORA MARKS DAUENHAUER

Eaglecrest, Juneau, February 24, 1989

Amelia, space-age girl

at top of Sourdough

makes her run with Eagle Grandpa Dick,

Raven girl, balancing on space,

gliding on air

in Tlingit colors:

black pants, turquoise jacket,

yellow shoulder patches,

black hair like feathers

clinging to her head,

face the color of red cedar.

Once in a while

I could even see space

between her legs and skis.

Diving downhill

she continues

side to side, slalom style,

following Grandpa’s red boots.

Then the two figures swoop around the

corner,

swishing downhill,

shooshing home.

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation

BY NATALIE DIAZ

Angels don’t come to the reservation.

Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.

Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing—

death. And death

eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel

fly through this valley ever.

Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though—

he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical

Indian. Sure he had wings,

jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops,

kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies.

Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.

Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something—

Nazarene church holds one every December,

organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder

Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white.

Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians.

Remember what happened last time

some white god came floating across the ocean?

Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels

up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing

velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups,

we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and

’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens.

You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to

Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

True Myth

BY HEID E. ERDRICH

Tell a child she is composed of parts

(her Ojibway quarters, her German half-heart)

she'll find the existence of harpies easy

to swallow. Storybook children never come close

to her mix, but manticores make great uncles,

Sphinx a cousin she'll allow, centaurs better to love

than boys—the horse part, at least, she can ride.

With a bestiary for a family album she's proud.

Her heap of blankets, her garbage grin, prove

she's descended of bears, her totem, it's true.

And that German witch with the candy roof,

that was her ancestor too. If swans can rain

white rape from heaven, then what is a girl to do?

Believe her Indian eyes, her sly French smile,

her breast with its veins skim milk blue—

She is the myth that is true.

Indian Boarding School: The Runaways

BY LOUISE ERDRICH

Home’s the place we head for in our sleep.

Boxcars stumbling north in dreams

don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run.

The rails, old lacerations that we love,

shoot parallel across the face and break

just under Turtle Mountains. Riding scars

you can’t get lost. Home is the place they cross.

The lame guard strikes a match and makes the dark

less tolerant. We watch through cracks in boards

as the land starts rolling, rolling till it hurts

to be here, cold in regulation clothes.

We know the sheriff’s waiting at midrun

to take us back. His car is dumb and warm.

The highway doesn’t rock, it only hums

like a wing of long insults. The worn-down welts

of ancient punishments lead back and forth.

All runaways wear dresses, long green ones,

the color you would think shame was. We scrub

the sidewalks down because it's shameful work.

Our brushes cut the stone in watered arcs

and in the soak frail outlines shiver clear

a moment, things us kids pressed on the dark

face before it hardened, pale, remembering

delicate old injuries, the spines of names and leaves.

Bluetop

BY SANTEE FRAZIER

Her head bangs against the window

and dash when I stop and turn,

my legs too short to work

the brakes.

Mama’s crooked

brow, her makeup smearing away,

slurs something about good

ol’ boy music, a pint of Kentucky

Deluxe in her hand. Two hours,

she said, and three days later,

Tuesday, she is finally wanting

to stop. I am getting better

at the turns, guiding her

Cutlass through these hills,

ten miles an hour, gravel roads,

the Cutlass

rattling out the last

fumes of gas. Engine stops,

the night dimly lit by the moon

hung over the treetops;

owls calling each other from

hilltop to valley bend.

The radio

fades in and out of static,

tractors revving, cows lowing,

and we may never make it back,

home still five hills away, daylight

coming over rocky edges of the hills.