Indigenous Poetry Examples

URL

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/Indigenous-Poetry-Examples-1386886648

IMAGE

Untitled (Blue and Gold) by Dyani White Hawk

CONTENT

This is for the Indigenous Epigraph Poetry Challenge in

All the poems come from the following

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144560/native-american-poetry-and-culture

A last note before presenting these poems. They are merely selections. , I used an alphabetical structure, A to Z , first come first serve.

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

By Sherman Alexie of Spokane/Coeur d’Alene

The morning air is all awash with angels—Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,

Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is blessed among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.

I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,”

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,

And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”

I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.

“I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—

Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn’t realize my mistake

Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause

During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52923/grief-calls-us-to-the-things-of-this-world

Blues-ing on the Brown Vibe

By Esther Belin of Diné (Navajo)

I.

And Coyote struts down East 14th

feeling good

looking good

feeling the brown

melting into the brown that loiters

rapping with the brown in front of the Native American Health Center

talking that talk

of relocation from tribal nation

of recent immigration to the place some call the United States

home to many dislocated funky brown

ironic immigration

more accurate tribal nation to tribal nation

and Coyote sprinkles corn pollen in the four directions

to thank the tribal people

indigenous to what some call the state of California

the city of Oakland

for allowing use of their land.

II.

And Coyote travels by Greyhound from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA thru

Dinétah

to Oakland, California, USA

laughing

Interstate 40 is cluttered with RVs from as far away as Maine

traveling and traveling

to perpetuate the myth

Coyote kicks back for most of the ride

amused by the constant herd of tourists

amazed by the mythic Indian they create

at a pit stop in Winslow

Coyote trades a worn beaded cigarette lighter for roasted corn

from a middle-aged Navajo woman squatting

in front of a store

and Coyote squats alongside the woman

talking that talk

of bordertown blues

of reservation discrimination

blues-ing on the brown vibe

a bilagáana snaps a photo

the Navajo woman stands

holding out her hand

requesting some of her soul back

instead

she replaces her soul with a worn picture of George Washington on a dollar bill

and Coyote starts on another ear of corn

climbing onto the Greyhound

the woman

still squatting

waiting

tired of learning not to want

waits there for the return of all her pieces.

III.

And Coyote wanders

right into a Ponca sitting at the Fruitvale Bart station

next to the Ponca is a Seminole

Coyote struts up to the two

“Where ya’all from?”

the Ponca replies

“Oooklahooma”

pause

the Seminole silent watches a rush of people climb in and out of the train

headed for Fremont

the Seminole stretches his arms up and back stiff from the wooden benches

pause

he pushes his lips out toward the Ponca slowly gesturing that he too is from Oklahoma

Coyote wanders

“where ’bouts?”

the Ponca replies

“Ponnca City”

pause

the Seminole replies

“Seminoole”

Coyote gestures to the Ponca

“You Ponca?”

the Ponca nods his head in affirmation

Coyote nods his head in content

to the Seminole

Coyote asks

“You Seminole?”

pause

the Seminole now watching some kids eating frozen fruit bars

nods his head

and Coyote shares his smokes with the two

and ten minutes later

they travel together on the Richmond train

headed for Wednesday night dinner at the Intertribal Friendship House.

IV.

And Coyote blues-ing on the urban brown funk vibe

wanders

in and out of existence

tasting the brown

rusty at times

worn bitter from relocation.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53453/blues-ing-on-the-brown-vibe

Prayer to Fix the Affections

By Gladys Cardiff of Eastern Band of Cherokee

O Ancient One,

your web hangs down from the pines.

I am of the Owl clan.

I have been to water,

my dress is of red clay.

He moves at the edge of you,

binds us with your threads.

The center of his soul shall be my soul’s center.

Our paths shall be white forever.

Where we move the paths from every direction

shall recognize each other.

We are one never to be parted.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53171/prayer-to-fix-the-affections

A Mighty Pulverizing Machine

By Laura Da’ of Shawnee (Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma)

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.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147037/a-mighty-pulverizing-machine

Anonymous Is Coyote Girl

By Anita Endrezze of Yaqui

From a newspaper photo and article about my godfather, James Moreno, East Los Angeles, 1950.

(Three police officers took a brutal beating in a wild free-for-all with a

family, including three young girls.

From left, James, 19, and Alex, 22, in jail after the fracas

on the porch of their home at 3307 Hunter.)

Jimmy is staring off the page, hands in his pockets.

A four-button dark shirt. No bruises,

but he looks dazed.

Alex wears a leather coat and a polka-dot shirt,

which is in itself a crime.

Nowhere is there a photo of a young girl

with a face carved like a racetrack saint,

eyes with all bets called off,

grinning like a coyote.

(Officer Parks had his glasses broken

with his own sap

and was thrown through a window.)

Jimmy and Alex are my dad’s cousins,

lived on Boyle Heights and tortillas.

Mama says the cops always harassed them, those niños

from East L.A., driving their low-riders,

chrome shinier than a cop’s badge.

And why wasn’t Coyote Girl mentioned, that round-armed

girl with a punch like a bag of bees,

a girl with old eyes, her lips cracking open

as she saw the cop sailing through glass, boiling out

of Boyle Heights, skidding on the sidewalk, flat as a tortilla?

(The officers received severe cuts and bruises,

were treated at a hospital and released in time to jail the youths,

who were charged with assault with a deadly weapon.)

Two years later, I was born and Jimmy entered the church,

hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, watching the christening.

Four drops of water, like popped-off wafer-thin buttons,

fell on my head.

No.

He never showed up that day

or any other. My spiritual guardian must’ve been there

in spirit only.

He didn’t know nada about Got and no one knows

where he is today, but I think you could find him at the end

of a knife. Or in the slash of the z

in ¡La Raza! the dark blood

reds of graffiti. Or tomatoes

grown in old coffee cans

by a white-haired man

sitting in the sun in a dark shirt,

next to an old woman growing younger every day

as I tell her story, my story,

our story

with all the grace and power

of a deadly weapon.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53430/anonymous-is-coyote-girl

… Bee

By Eric Gansworth of Onondaga Nation (Onondaga Nation)

I stood in a longhouse

with a woman who may or may not

be Mohawk. Some shift their opinions

about her like meteorologists, as if

her blood were a storm system tracked

in its comings and goings. But the father

of her two sons was, without question, Seneca.

We knew that, in Haudenosaunee country, a father

is to some degree irrelevant, that her own

shifting identity would impact her sons’ lives

like a gene vulnerable to betrayal, causing

certain, terminal conditions. She waited

on an elder she called Steam (warning I was not

to call the elder woman by that name). Steam

(not Steam) would observe the boys, understand

their natures, give them their Creator names defining

their lives during the next ceremony. I confessed

my namelessness, confessed my longhouse- and fluency-

deficient community, and confessed that my clan

mother, three hours away, did not know me well

enough to give me a name, confessed my community followed

a more casual ceremony. You find your name after a social misstep,

a dubious facial feature, a birth defect. Names offer

the name-givers comfort, that your challenge is harder

than theirs, no matter the truth.

Our names are a convoluted toughening of our skins. My name

is not like Steam (no one is forbidden to use it). No one

calls me Batman because of my status, my utility

belt, my impressive batpole, my agility, my muscles,

my profile in spandex, my virtues, but because I wore

the cape to an older age than I should have, and could

continue to wear it now, as that shit is not going away

any time soon. Even kids who only know Christian Bale

or Michael Keaton, lurking in latex and leather hood,

still think Batman is my name.

And this is why I have no memory for when or how you became

the Bumblebee, what it means, beyond the literal.

You soar in gardens, spend days ensuring growth,

and if metaphors are at work here, this one seems true

enough to keep you in amber wings, fuzzy yellow rings,

black lacquer torso, and sensitive antennae.

What metaphor suits the night I left on the Amtrak

for Chicago, past 1:00 a.m., while you stood

on the platform, watching those cars pull out,

the night I wanted to leap from the train, stay?

I cannot invent new names for the ways we slow,

struggle, attempt to maintain the illusion of futures

without measure, defy actuary numbers and because I have

gone closer to the light than you have, the story is

easier to craft and finesse than it should be.

Pollination trails are smaller than those I’m forced

to fly in, and lying in Little Rock, Santa Fe, Manhattan,

Minneapolis, Seattle, hotel rooms, the ellipse of your name

trail winds me home, waiting, dusted in pollen and history.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/146712/-bee

Fieldwork

By Joan Naviyuk Kane of Inupiaq

Another day of heat-

strangers continue to wobble

across the horizon, bringing drought

when instead we should have deluge.

I steep snow-lichen in water I

drew from a lake

which has since gone dry.

At sea few understood me,

as though I induced a sickness

that deafened, then healed.

As before, I predict lies,

to be pushed from the boat

time and time again.

Nevertheless, I expect

to get by while their widowers·

seek refuge with their provident

families; perhaps a storm will pile fish

at their doors when the red tide rises,

perhaps they will not follow as we move,

moon into moon, under another sky.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/158604/fieldwork

How Soon

By Gordon Henry Jr. of White Earth Chippewa

The story goes from in a rainfall

to sister walking a field

browned autumn. And when she arrives

winter has come, so the old man

rises from his chair, picks up

matches, pipes and tools, and

walks out to begin again.

The sculptures grow by the day,

birds in ice, recognizable

eagles, a bear who began

as a man in a moment of dance.

He does this in ice, all

winter carving at dawn,

carving at dusk.

And sister after walking a field

browned autumn, arrives, watches

from the east window, waits,

goes out to him in spring,

taps him on the shoulder

and points to the pools

of water he's standing over.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147311/how-soon

Marshlands

By Emily Pauline Johnson of Mohawk

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,

And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,

In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,

Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.

Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,

Sail up the silence with the nearing night.

And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,

Steals twilight and its shadows o’er the swale.

Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,

Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52095/marshlands

Ghost Dance

By Sara Littlecrow-Russell of Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) and Han-Naxi Métis

Two hundred seventy

Ghost Dancers died dreaming

That humanity would drown

In a flood of White sins.

Then the renewed earth

Would reclaim city and town,

Leaving only Ghost Dancers

And those who lived by nature’s laws.

History books say the threat is gone.

The Ghost Dance died with the ancestors—

Wovoka and his sacred dream

Were destroyed.

Each time it rains,

I go out to the sidewalk,

Where the tree roots

Have broken the concrete

Listening to the water’s whispering:

“It is coming soon.”

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53461/ghost-dance

Love Poem to a Butch Woman

By Deborah A. Miranda of Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen

This is how it is with me:

so strong, I want to draw the egg

from your womb and nourish it in my own.

I want to mother your child made only

of us, of me, you: no borrowed seed

from any man. I want to re-fashion

the matrix of creation, make a human being

from the human love that passes between

our bodies. Sweetheart, this is how it is:

when you emerge from the bedroom

in a clean cotton shirt, sleeves pushed back

over forearms, scented with cologne

from an amber bottle—I want to open

my heart, the brightest aching slit

of my soul, receive your pearl.

I watch your hands, wait for the sign

that means you’ll touch me,

open me, fill me; wait for that moment

when your desire leaps inside me.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53926/love-poem-to-a-butch-woman

The Dice Changer

By Duane Niatum of S’Klallam

Raven steals your name for an autumn joke:

buries it along with you under the broadest hemlock

known to squirrel or chipmunk.

He croaks it’s too bad you were awake for the event.

He accuses you of boring him

with the same old questions over and over.

You attempt revolt to prove his rattle

is cracked and as brittle as his song.

Raven clacks his beak like a trap and hollers

your face is a mask splitting down the middle

and madness has found a home.

All stink and fur dung, the black master

quips you had a chance to flee

but forgot where and what direction.

Now he blurts your pain must jump in the river,

the river thrash like the wind,

the mountain awaken you to the currents of the sea.

Raven hops away and chuckles as the dark chatters,

flips you over to your earth shadow.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53165/the-dice-changer

Grandmothers Land

By William Oandasan of Yuki

around the house stood an

orchard of plum, apple and pear

a blackwalnut tree, one white pine,

groves of white oak and willow clumps

the home of Jessie was largely redwood

blood, flesh and bone sprouted

inside her womb of redwood

for five generations

the trees now stand unpruned and wild

after relocating so many years before the War

the seeds of Jessie have returned

afternoon sunlight on the field

breezes moving grass and leaves

memories with family names wait

within the earth, the mountains,

the valley, the field, the trees

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53257/grandmothers-land

Lear’s Wife

By Elise Paschen of Osage

... if thou shouldst not be glad,

I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb,

Sepulch’ring an adult’ress.

— William Shakespeare, King Lear

He faked my death,

set up this ranch

far from my three

daughters. Suburban

hellhole. With bracelet

on ankle, house-

arrest. At noon

the bully sun

shoulders a ripe

moon. In the dark

soaps reign. The anchors

will often flash

their glitterati

weddings. Not one

daughter has birthed

an heir. In vitro —

be damned. I hose

the lawn and count

the cars like fish

slipping their shiny

chrome along asphalt.

Which sparrow missed?

Cordelia —

my gutted heart.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90674/lears-wife

Buckeye as You Are

By Wendy Rose of Hopi and Miwok

September 11, 2001

They walk past you

weeping

for the leaves that burnt

& fell, the wood exposed

like bone, sculpture

that suddenly emerges

from white haze.

You old fortune-teller,

you could have told them

in their vibrant grief

whispering through the night wind

your breath held in your heart

like the trembling promise of tomorrow,

just before dawn

there was no pain

you are the wood

not the leaf,

falling is not

falling but

offering.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53427/buckeye-as-you-are

Now I'm a Woman

By Cedar Sigo of Suquamish

When you hear the knives ring

Turn the page.

I wonder why I am not

Myself of late, ridiculous glass edges

Turn back on themselves

And soon reveal

The hand of an apprentice

And godforsaken embarrassing torch,

Stormy back hallways

Out of the black and wooden theatres.

Crystal Waters plus her driver

Plus her entourage is still rolling out

Of the Sands, Atlantic City

On the soundtracks to shows

Held over at The Fairmount

She is throwing back shots

With the mafia. I have learned

To take apart this American Songbook

And very fortunately as I would take

My audience in confidence

Threads of gold fall closely together

Coming to break us off.

At the first of the shows

I sang this song

And in between I saw him in the hall,

What could I tell you?

“Someday we’ll build on a hilltop high.”

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54490/now-im-a-woman

Battlefield

By Mark Turcotte of Ojibwe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa)

Back when I used to be Indian

I am standing outside the

pool hall with my sister.

She strawberry blonde. Stale sweat

and beer through the

open door. A warrior leans on his stick,

fingers blue with chalk.

Another bends to shoot.

His braids brush the green

felt, swinging to the beat

of the jukebox. We move away.

Hank Williams falls again

in the backseat of a Cadillac.

I look back.

A wind off the distant hills lifts my shirt,

brings the scent

of wounded horses.

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/40865/battlefield

And I wonder where you are

By Tanaya Winder of Duckwater Shoshone

Sacred stars blanket a nighttime sky,

each light reminds us of the preciousness of life.

Your memory lives along the Milky Way,

each twinkle saying don’t forget my name.

It’s an epidemic, a sickness of the earth,

a war we enter as soon as we are birthed.

Indigenous women, girls, our two-spirit, too.

When did this world start disappearing you?

URL

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155482/and-i-wonder-where-you-are