When Turtles Fly

VOICE

2011-10-22T11:39:00.001-04:00

Terry Tempest Williams asks, I came to finding my voice through the pain and suffering of those I love most - how do I deal with that? What do I do with that knowledge?

This is precisely the dilemma I faced from the very beginning, when writing about the California Missions became the focus of my work, both scholarly and poetic.

My “successes” in life (tenured teaching position, house, car, children’s college, health care, publications, the attention and respect of publishers, universities, other scholars and poets) have come about mostly through the fact that I write about and research California Indian history and experiences. And most of those histories and experiences are not pleasant “legends” or warm, fuzzy memories. Most of them are about death by horrible disease or murder, the fragmentation of family relationships, self-destructive responses to trauma, the abandonment of children, exile and/or homelessness, displacement, loss of language and culture – and more, all at the hands of another people whose blood also runs in my veins.

Is it any wonder that I am reluctant to claim any of my successes as such? That I am so careful to always look over my shoulder at what might be coming up behind me? That I dream about sleeping on a bed of bones carved with the words of another language? That I feel guilty for profiting from telling the stories of my ancestors in the missions? That I shrink from compliments about my writing? That this writing comes so hard, takes so much out of me?

So when I heard Terry Tempest William speak at Lee Chapel, on the Washington and Lee University campus, her questions about “voice” resonated down to my bones. She spoke about her new book, one that she had thought would be about voice, finding voice, and said those words: I came to finding my voice through the pain and suffering of those I love most - how do I deal with that? What do I do with that knowledge?

I went to bed that night thinking, it’s a responsibility. It’s a debt, this gift, and I must repay it by carrying the responsibility of giving voice to those who could not speak. Isn’t that the answer? Isn’t that the way to assuage my guilt at earning my living from the tortured cries of my beloved ancestors and relatives? To accept it as a charge, not a gift?

But I wasn’t satisfied. It felt, not wrong, but incomplete. Too easy. And not enough. I know that often in those liminal moments between wakefulness and sleeping, revelation slips in, so I asked (myself, the Universe, the Ancestors): but what more is it? and perhaps because Terry’s achingly honest vulnerability had created a receptivity and openness that hadn’t been there before, the response came back almost as if it had been waiting for me to ask:

It’s not that you’ve found your voice through the pain of others. It’s that their voices found you.

I opened my hand and put that thought inside it, closed my fist around the warmth of the truth, and slept.

When I woke up, I remembered a dream I’d had twenty years before. Early on in my adult writing life, when I was about thirty, soon after the poem “I Am Not a Witness” came to me, I dreamt that I was part of a group of Indian people being used in an experiment. We were locked up in a dark, crowded space together. Huge wooden doors slammed shut, and we beat our fists against them, splintering the wood into our flesh, but unable to escape. No windows, no light, just wives, sisters, brothers, husbands, uncles, babies, toddlers, small children, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, in-laws – trapped – while the scientists watched from one-way windows in their white lab coats. In the dream, I knew we were inside a mission; the experiment was to see how much of what our ancestors had experienced was stored in the cells of our bodies. In the dream, I opened my mouth. A scream came out. A horrible, broken scream came out of my throat. But it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my scream. It was someone else’s scream, the scream of an ancestor, coming from my own throat.

When I awoke in the dark, damp with sweat and panic, I had not uttered a sound. But my throat hurt, scraped raw. My voice, when I tried to speak, was hoarse and dry; my vocal cords scratched and strained.

Not my voice. Her voice.

The voice of an ancestor, joining mine. Singing with mine – making a song, collaborating in a song for multiple voices.

I don’t mean this in some new-age, “channeling,” Seth-like explanation. I’m not sure how I mean it. But if time is, indeed, spiral and happening all around us all the time, then there must be places where people separated by chronology touch as the spiral curves inward. I know that my sister Louise is one of those people, one who dreams, who listens, and acts for the Ancestors. We are conduits, but not mindless, robotic tubes through which something is delivered. That would be possession. That would be someone else controlling me, dictating to me. And that is not what I feel happening as I write.

What I feel as I write is this: a door opens inside me, a door like one of those between hotel rooms, with locks on each side. I must unlock my side. Someone – the Ancestor wishing to speak – must unlock her side. We must both stand, willingly, in that threshold.

If I am afraid or unwilling or unable to unlock my side, then she will attempt to come as a dream. Of this I am certain. Once, during a time of denial about writing, I dreamt of a bear attempting to knock down the door to get into my bedroom! She was a beautiful bear, and I loved her rough brown fur and long claws and dark eyes even as I barricaded the door against her.

The stories I tell with this voice that is both mine and the voices of others are, in fact, a lot like bears. Beautiful and admirable, glossy and strong. Wild and unpredictable and full of fierceness, scarred, in pain.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a turtle. I have to be able to withdraw into a protective shell at times, rest, then stick my head back out for the next round. A turtle is a good form to have; a hard shell into which one may retreat is a necessary tool in this work.

Am I constructing a story that lets me off the hook of survivor’s guilt? Perhaps. But what I like about the “revelation” I had the night after Terry Tempest Williams’ talk is not that it somehow removes the responsibility of bearing witness for my Ancestors, because it does not - I owe my very existence to their tenacity, their willingness to be Bad Indians rather than Dead Indians. What I like is how I see that the Ancestors are undefeated after all: not dead and silent in the ground, under pavement, in museums. No. The Ancestors are alive and kicking – kicking that door down, insisting on telling their stories, still making songs, still bearing witness themselves. They are not victims, needing my help. If anything, I am the needy one! I am in dire need of their wisdom, their direction, their Coyotismo, their survivance.

What I like is that they share their stories, still tell me how to live, allow me to write it down; what I like is that they are still teaching us how to survive.

Following Isabel

2011-06-10T22:11:00.001-04:00

Following Isabel

Re-reading parts of Almanac of the Dead, finding that it helps me write (by which I mean, get a grip on, wrap my mind around) these essays about my Carmel Mission ancestor, Isabel Meadows, and her survival of the missions ... and her narration of stories about those who survived with her, and those who did not. Silko’s descriptions of wars that never end is so apt, and the nearly infinite ways of splintering souls that she describes, are so like what Isabel describes in her mixed Spanish-English heartbroken vocabulary. How Silko found the words to write like this, and how Isabel found the words to speak like this, and how these words find their way into the world to change it, are just rocking me back on my heels this morning. When someone is broken down to the very bottom of what can survive, how is it that such power can arise out of those shards? It has to be a power that comes from beyond one individual; it has to be the power of brokenness itself, the transformation that brokenness incites, absolute loss and betrayal. How can I write about this? Have the words to write about it even been invented yet?

One of the ways Isabel managed this was simply by telling the bare bones truth about the lives of Carmel mission Indian survivors. Just that: telling what happened between husbands and wives, between mothers and children, between lovers, between sisters, brothers. Between priest and confessor; between Indian woman and white rapist; between kidnapped Indian children and slavemasters. The truth: the infidelity, the physical blows, the moments spent gathering chia seeds or picking wild strawberries together; the drunken fights between brothers, the pain of having an only son hung by the whites, the exhibition of an ancient old woman to a group of thrill-seeking white picnickers for the few pennies it brought. She just tells the truth, but it is a truth long hidden by mythology, lies, stereotypes, guilt, horror, fear, history-by-the-victors. It is a truth which, beneath the piles of gilded bullshit called California history, doesn’t break down but grows sharper, more pungent, potent with repressed clarity. Distilled truth, perhaps: cooked beneath the lies, growing harder, sharper, unrepentant and medicinal as rattlesnake venom.

Isabel also managed to tell these stories by listening and observing the chaos she saw going on around her, rather than denying that it happened, rather than self-medicating to block out the pain. It’s startling how little she writes about herself, despite living to be 85 years old; instead, she focuses on the Indian community where she lived all her life. She takes in the stories of others, those who are not able to give them to Harrington, and she preserves them. She is receptive as an open basket, calling those stories into herself. At times, she appears judgmental towards her peers, condemning their drinking, multiple sexual partners, illegitimate children, cruelties toward each other, petty feuds. That is the colonized soul in Isabel speaking, then; and even at that moment, she is testifying against colonization’s rapacious setting of Indian against Indian. For in the very next breath, Isabel makes a direct connection between the loss of community and land, and that destructive behavior she records. She says,

Some died of sadness and others went away from there, dispersed and scattered everywhere. Some ended up living away in Sacramento or in Santa Barbara. Throughout all those places there were Carmeleños hiding that they knew the language. And many died with smallpox also, and with measles—they didn’t know how to protect themselves. And years were ended with drunkenness. Before, in Monterey, it seems like every other house had a bar and these poor people drank until they died. Some drank from sorrow because they had been cast out.

The history of the Carmelo and of Monterey tells of many accidents and fights and stabbings and clubbings and everything that happened to the Indians when they were drinking. And many deaths resulted from the drinking of whiskey and wine. In this manner, the Indian people were finished off faster—with the drinking and with so much sorrow that they had been cast away from their land.

I find that statement she makes about the loss of El Potrero to be a phenomenally astute analysis of post-colonial trauma; a moment in which she completely transcends her Catholic training, her European anti-Indian sentiment, and her own self-hatred. A moment in which she loves her people, and mourns for them, mourns with them, mourns for a specific loss of a specific piece of land that happened nearly 100 years in the past, but which she ‘remembers’ as if it were yesterday. Isabel had to have heard this story from her mother, and her mother’s generation. Yet when she tells that story, she tells it as if she saw those El Potrero Indians – the infamous Estefana Real, her children, her sisters, their children – forced off of their land, camping on the banks of the Carmel River, and weeping with rage. “They had to leave, and they were gathered together camping at the river – and from there the Indian people dispersed,” she says, and in my heart, I hear an echo: “By the waters of Babylon, where we sat down; yea, we wept…when we remembered Zion.”

Isabel listened to that story about the theft of El Potrero, one of the last Indian-controlled pieces of land left; she listened to the immense, unspeakable grief underneath the words of the story, and she made the leap from that moment to the drinking, fighting, self-destructive behaviors that followed, and said: we lost hope. The descent into clinical depression, the self-medicating, the self-hatred at losing – she didn’t have the modern psychological vocabulary for that, but she did her best, and her analysis of the situation is deeply moving, insightful, beautiful, and above all, loving.

Sometimes you write about pain in order to express love for those involved. And oh, how Isabel loved those bad Indians. That is the third way I see Isabel managing to speak the unspeakable: through sheer love. A tenderness for those drunken Indians, those knife-fighting, coal-throwing, back-stabbing, starving, prostituted, wife-abusing, poor, Spanish-speaking, Indian-speaking, fragile souls who had been removed and erased to the point of ultimate despair. Yes, she bad-mouthed their violence, their pursuit of alcohol, their cruelty toward women and children. She didn’t like their behavior. But she never lost sight of what had made them that way. She never lost sight of who they could have been, if not for Missionization; she never forgot that they were good people driven insane by insane punishment. If Isabel teaches me anything, she teaches me that: you can love even in the midst of witnessing your loved one’s self-destruction. You can love, and despair, at the same time.

For me, this is of course about my father, about loving the broken jagged pieces of him despite the gashes inflicted by his touch; but it is not just about my father. It’s about the contemporary Esselen Nation and our incessant in-fighting, the power-plays, the mistrust, the betrayals, the grief over lost sisters and lost relationships, cracks driven into us by the wedge of the BIA, the U.S. Government, the demand for blood quantum and paper trails for a people whose blood was spilled all over the state, and for whom even the joke of a signed treaty was so dangerous, they had to be hidden away from the eyes of the world for decades. I see us as a forest cut down, stumps splintered and riddled with iron wedges driving through to separate us at the root. Recovery seems impossible.

I see my sister trying to hold the tribe together by sheer will power. One woman, no matter how amazing, cannot do that. Is she holding on to a memory, a dream? I’m afraid to even think that way; her hold is so tenuous. I want to believe we will make a comeback, we will remember how to love one another, learn how to love our broken selves as the makings of a mosaic. I want a tribe to come home to, a center to the universe, a place and a people that will hold me, comfort me, welcome what I can give.

I want what Isabel wanted. It must have seemed impossible to her, too; but she never stopped hoping. She wanted the U.S. Government to give the Carmel Indians some land, a place to call ours, a place to be a people again. She was looking for an acknowledgment of our presence; for us to be given permission to exist.

Some say we can’t wait, and it can’t be given. We must act now, and we must take what is ours, claim it. Sovereignty. But you can only claim it if you speak with a single voice, a single mind, a single dream. And we cannot. We are made of me and I and mine and want, multiplied by hundreds of years of violence.

Yet Isabel never stopped hoping. It was not simply because she was a strong woman. It was because she loved. It was because she knew the truth. Her part in healing our brokenness was to listen, to remember, and to tell.

I don’t feel that I have done any differently; I don’t feel that I have done any more. But it is all I can think of to do: to admit the power of story. To follow her example. To love our brokenness, and hope for transformation from splinters and shards into whole, vibrant, brilliant mosaics.

Can we do this? How do we do this?

We is the operative word. This healing is not something that can be done alone; the healing of a community takes that whole community. And how to lead a community toward wholeness is, I believe, something that can be accomplished through story. We have so many great storytellers. I’m trying to learn from them, trying to enact that transformation. Isabel is our teacher. In this project about her stories, I am trying to bring her teachings back to our tribe in a way they will be able to hear.

Isabel, do you see me? I'm so far behind you. But listening. Listening.

Winners of the "Codename: Geronimo" poetry contest!

2011-06-01T07:08:00.001-04:00

When Turtles Fly is proud to announce the winners of the first ever "Codename: Geronimo" poetry contest. Please see the previous blog entry for the contest's inspiration.

I've chosen 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and honorable mention.

Each of these poems approaches the topic from different angles, yet each also participates in one of Native American literature's signature acts: that of rewriting, or correcting, the historical record. Whether it is Anita Endrezze's conflation of colonization and Middle Eastern war, soldiers with "boots heavy as centuries," or Kim Shuck's ageless "debate over the bones," or Kimberlee Lee's warning to hate-mongers of any era, "We see you in your darkness/it's where you always go," or Tiffany Midge's haunting question, "How many times should they kill Geronimo?" these writers understand and point out the terrible genealogy of racism and oppression. And, these writers know that to correct and reconstruct history from a Native perspective is to directly engage with lies - those fierce guardians of "history"- that are deeply embedded in the mythology of the United States. Each of those poets goes singing into that conflict, understanding the necessity of their intervention.

I'm honored to have their words grace this blog, and my life! Thank you, poets!

And here they are.

FIRST PRIZE

A Rogue Wind Over Fort Sill
Spring Song for Goyathlay 2011

Windows are such lonely things the
Dry of Turkey Creek the humidity of
Osrash the debate over the bones these
Threads these words that stretch that
Call a handful of dirt this invocation that might be a
Cure for unhealing wounds for the lack of a
Scapula an ulna or an ingredient in an amulet for
Hiding in hills unfound the
Invisible blamed or blameless the
Lost in the crevices those
Folded, sequestered words kept
In a box at someone’s throat or carved into a
Gemstone a word learned
Silently this cure this
Contact poison this
New connection

by Kim Shuck

SECOND PRIZE

K.I.A

“We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say.” Geronimo (Goyathlay, or “one who yawns”)

The sun

is a prairie of light.

The darkness

listens to us

as we wonder

if it is separate

from ourselves.

The prairie moon

is yellow grass

and river stones.

The People sing,

their voices

lost in the vastness.

Then comes the soldiers,

with orders that march on

boots heavy as centuries.

The silence of light

clouds of blasted light

as Time passes from enemy

to enemy. Whose hands

are clean from the ashes

of the dead?

The earth turns

red.

Tail winds of bombs,

bullets cracking

the sky

into our bones

your bones,

all the bones of the sky

breaking dawn

into splinters

of death.

by Anita Endrezze

THIRD PRIZE

Name Game

It’s not as if we didn’t know

The politics of Indian hating live

On in your war machine red with blood

Driven by fear hidden in code.

We see you in your darkness.

We know the places you go

Always repeating yourself in patterns

Too familiar, too loud, too slow

Foolish in your pride, you don’t think

We notice; you are wrong

That man was no Geronimo

We see you in your darkness

It’s the place you always go.

by Kimberli Lee

HONORABLE MENTION

Codename Geronimo

In 2011 someone made an order, kill Geronimo;
soldiers dispatched by jet, by car, with orders to kill Geronimo.

The Brits had a new princess and Fergie’s daughters had silly hats
but the Royal wedding was eclipsed by the killing of Geronimo.

I heard about it on the radio; bin Laden’s been ratted out
living in a pleasant Pakistani suburb, KIA Geronimo.

He used his wives as shields; there is nothing about
that fact to cheer yet some did after killing Geronimo.

For tribal nations the namesake’s a hero, little doubt
occupy their minds as to the military’s code KIA Geronimo.

It’s just another cry for war without
restraint. Our hero wasn’t a terrorist, the real Geronimo

fought to protect homelands, way of life, I’d say devout,
feared perhaps but how many times should they kill Geronimo?

by Tiffany Midge

CODE-NAME: GERONIMO

2011-05-03T16:25:00.002-04:00

So I'm running a poetry contest, totally impromptu. All Native writers welcome to submit one poem, any style. topic: Using code-name "Geronimo" for Osama Bin Laden. Prizes from my own personal bookshelf! The "Love & Erotica" issue of RedInk, the "Sexuality, Nationality, Indigeneity" volume of GLQ, and "The Truth About Stories" by Thomas King. Send entries to deborah.a.miranda@gmail.com by June 1, 2011. Winners will be announced and published on WhenTurtlesFly/blogspot.com/ on 6/1/2011. C'mon, you know you want to let it rip. Feel free to share.

Day 30: The Last Poem

2011-04-30T20:52:00.004-04:00

The Last Poem

Will the Last Poem know that it’s the last poem?

Will the Last Poem be written down, or just the tail end

wisp of someone’s final thought? How do you judge

the last breath of a beloved? And if the Last Poem

comes during our lifetime, will we die of broken hearts?

Will the Last Poem’s alphabet be Japanese, Cherokee, English,

Cyrillic, Persian, petroglyph? Should the Last Poem’s words

be spoken, or sung? Will anyone live to hear it?

Must the Last Poem be engraved in stone, or scattered

on water, eaten for sustenance? Will the Last Poem

be a love poem? An elegy? A Praise poem? That poem,

that Last Poem – will it be created by a person, or

composed of silence and ashes? Is it waiting to be born?

Is it falling in to place even now? Have we found

the meter, placed the metaphor, set the type,

chosen the font, inked the press, laid the paper? When

the Last Poem is written, how will we know when it’s done?

Day 29: What I Know About My Grandfather

2011-04-29T21:42:00.004-04:00

What I Know About My Grandfather

He was born in Elwood,

Nebraska, April 29, 1900.

His father Orlando

was known to be “strict.”

His mother, Eva, was barely

fifteen when they married.

Her husband was in his

forties. Their daughter

was born less than a year

after the marriage.

Their son, my grandfather,

arrived 2 years later.

One day, Eva disappeared.

So did the town doctor.

Perhaps she had taken

her wounds to him.

They fled to Montana,

leaving the two children

behind. My grandfather

was three; his sister was five.

Ken was a handful, they say –

shuttled between grandparents,

always in trouble. At sixteen

he lied about his age, enlisted.

He made it as far as

Port Townsend, in Washington

State. Pneumonia laid him

low before he got shipped

overseas. Probably saved

his life. The day his train

pulled into Elwood, the whole

town was gone to the river

for the Fourth of July. Only

my grandmother, wisp

of a girl with a French

last name, met him

at the station. They’d grown

up together. Her own first

love had gone abroad,

abandoned her for some

Japanese woman. Perhaps

homegrown love was best,

they thought. A few years

later, they married. “I hope

you know what you’re in for,”

my grandfather’s uncle

warned Doris before the wedding.

“Never work, a boy

from a broken home,”

the Elwood ladies gossiped.

My grandparents proved

them all wrong, ended up

in Beverly Hills. My grandfather

and his movie-star looks,

sky-blue eyes, charmed

folks on his postal route

through the manicured mansions

of the rich and famous.

My grandmother worked

at McDonnell-Douglas,

ran the first computers.

They had one child,

my mother. Ken’s early

shift brought him home

in time to meet his daughter

after school, let him spend

weekends on lakes, rivers, ocean -

anything wet with fish in it.

Doris came home at six p.m.,

supervised violin lessons,

table etiquette, Girl Scouts,

dance lessons, homework.

It was a good life. In 20 years,

my grandfather retired from

to great fanfare, sold the house,

bought a cabin in the Tehachapis.

Those dry, sandy mountains

were his retreat. He had a boat

in the garage, a few stolen smokes

out back, trips up and down

the coast in his Silver Streak

trailer, trading one fishing camp

after another, reeling in salmon

almost too big for the boat.

He was happy. When his own

daughter disappeared,

left three children behind,

his wife wanted to take us

in. Our grandfather said

no. We went to foster homes.

Some of us never

came out. “He didn’t want

to share me,” my grandmother

told me, years later,

on her own deathbed.

He didn’t want any anchors

tying him down to one place.

Maybe even then something

had already started unraveling

inside his beautiful head,

under that steel gray hair,

maybe that's when the disease

with a name not yet invented

began to steal his life.

He didn’t understand why

his decisions went so wrong,

why his driver’s license

was taken away. He thought

his wife was his mother,

come back after all these years.

Sometimes he’d wake at 3 a.m.

convinced he must sort

and deliver the mail.

My grandmother wrestled

with him, argued, pleaded.

One day we drove him

to the first nursing home,

which kicked him out

because he “wandered,”

and so did the next

and the next, until

all the savings

from all those airplanes

and all that movie star mail

were gone; until finally

the Vet’s Home took him

in for his last years.

I remember visiting

there, on American Lake;

I fed him mashed potatoes

with a plastic spoon,

wiped his chin bristling

with silver stubble

while my grandmother

swallowed tears hard,

and my mother argued

with nurses over pills,

missing slippers, bedsores.

“Tepa,” I called,

“Tepa,” I coaxed, “Eat

some more potatoes, okay?”

Chin trembling, he refused.

Asked for his mother.

We drove home in silence,

three women praying

for mercy. It came,

in the form of an aneurysm.

My grandfather died

at American Lake Veteran’s Hospital

in Tacoma, Washington,

spring of 1980.

He was a long way

from Nebraska, Beverly Hills,

Tehachapi, Klamath Falls.

A restless man, he never

really settled down,

kept moving. Always looking

for something. Some place.

Someone. What I know

about my grandfather:

life hurt him. He never

got over it. That hurt

multiplied with each

generation. It will take

us at least that long

to learn how to erase

abandonment.

Day 25: Haiku

2011-04-25T21:37:00.002-04:00

It's finally happened. I have spent so many hours today prepping for my Spring Term class (starts tomorrow) that I'm pulling out a haiku. I've been working on it in my head all day; really good haiku can take months. I acknowledge that this is a bit of a cop-out on my part, but it should count that I spent the whole day planning poetry exercises for my students!

Black skink with blue tail,
shy inky mountain jewel.
Cobalt flash, goodbye!

Day 24: Autobiography of a Name

2011-04-24T23:04:00.002-04:00

Autobiography of a Name

Another girl – that’s what my father said.
Five! Disgusted, he went out for a drink.
He had a crush on Debra Paget, a B list
movie starlet. My mom took classes with her
at Hollywood Professional High so
she said yes, as long as we spell it right.

“Ann” came from my mother’s then-best friend.
Lived downstairs, shared cigarettes, coffee,
rides to the grocery store. Two women, camaradas
in this war called womanhood. I know how it is:
sick kids, errant husbands, secrets no one
else knows to this day. Best friends -
till one moves away. Or runs away,
and never comes back.

And "Miranda," well, that’s from some Spaniard
who made it across the monster-pocked Atlantic,
sponsored a neofito, some tribeless Indian
with a name in the Devil's tongue; saved him
at the baptismal font way down at the tip of Baja,
back when California was still an island,
still hoarding her gold like a coquette.
From that tiny barren mission, the newly-
minted Mirandas walked all the way up the coast
to Monterey. Imagine that journey. I can’t.
Talk about tough. Tough, and fertile.
Twelve kids in fourteen years; three survived.

So I carry these names, these stories,
these people around on my body like little pebbles
picked up from all the places I’ve been.
In one pocket, Debra’s best movies: Broken Arrow,
Ten Commandments. In another, Ann’s brief loyalty
to my mother when a friend meant a hand,
across a ravenous abyss. And that Spaniard:
Soldier? Colonist? Priest? Did he leave his family
behind, flee the Inquisition? Which ship was he on?
Did he rape Indian women? Sic dogs on children?
It is difficult to imagine a nice Conquistador
in Baja California in the 1600s. But I carry him
around, too. He is the rock in my shoe,
a sharp piece of gravel named choice,
luck, cruelty, kindness. I carry his name
like the son my father wanted. A name
that lives on, tags us, marks us with a beacon
visible for centuries.

Day 23: Civilization

2011-04-23T23:20:00.002-04:00

Civilization

We think we can fence in a river.
We think we can de-fang rattlesnakes, de-claw tigers, and we'll be safe.
We think we can harness poison, make it work for us.

We ignore our nightmares, our own illnesses, the obesity of body and soul.
We polish our silver, our cars, our tall glass buildings.
We refuse to believe that we are not the most powerful force on the planet.

We pretend that the earth doesn't have a heartbeat.
We don't know how to say no to ourselves, to our children.
We miss all the signs: suicidal whales, earthquakes, melting ice.

Our toys and games distract us -
until a levee breaches, or a nuclear plant melts down.
Then we watch the news obsessively. Send money. Stare in disbelief.

Some say, oh well. It's the end time. What can we do?
And party harder.
Some hearts can't hold any more, and break.

Some fight like cornered animals, high on adrenaline.
We ignore our prophets.
We neglect our prayers.

We trust corporations with the lives of our children.
We argue over the best tango moves.
We reverse engineer fantasy into reality on television screens.

We know how to create wonders: Polio vaccine. Trips to the moon. Computer chips.
We know how a blessing looks, feels, sounds, tastes, smells:
Starry Night. The Esselen Hands. Aretha Franklin. Chocolate. Bread.

When will we admit how much work the maintenance
of a miracle requires? Can we make it that far?
If we do, can we finally call ourselves civilized?

Day 21: Rowing

2011-04-21T23:51:00.005-04:00

Coming in under the wire tonight - but see what silliness - or not - this late hour brings?

Can't get the formatting to stick, so here is the text, followed by the way it actually looks on the page:

Rowing

Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream!
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.

And what a stream this life has been. Jesus.
I’m halfway down the Grand Canyon now,
looking up at the magnificent cliffs around me: damn,
it’s been a hell of a ride! I jumped into this rowboat
with no compass, no sail, and no sense of direction.
More than half the time, I’ve been bailing like a sonovabitch
just to keep my knees dry. I’ve hit rocks, sprung leaks,
spun around whirlpools that threatened to suck me down
into an icy ending. If this life started out as a quiet little stream,
it’s gone rogue and flooded too many fucking times to count,
dried up into a dusty arroyo, filled with the debris of other
people’s lives, bristled thick with sharp reeds, washed clean
out to sea. This stream has raged with mud dark as chocolate, tossed
boulders like corks, landed big ol’ salmon up on the banks. This stream
has been panned for its gold, diverted for its clarity, damned for its truth.
See those deep pools? joy settled in for awhile - followed by long drops
where hearts still falls forever. Yeah, I’ve almost lost an oar once
or twice. Blistered my palms trying to pull out of those rapids.
Taught me to pay attention – taught me prayer is now. If
I’ve scraped past your rowboat, if we’ve locked oars
in the tussle, if, flailing rowers, we’ve ever forced
each other off course, I’m not sorry - I’m glad
for the bitch of collision. I’m glad for the chance
to carve deeper into these riven banks,
this cathedral of laughing stone.

Day 19: Unmasked

2011-04-19T23:28:00.006-04:00

It's spring break; I'm trying to finish an article revision, and all the research I've been doing seeps into my poetry. Today I spent the day in my office with 2 dogs, reading about Spanish dogs of war. It was like being in two worlds at once, trying to see two different worlds simultaneously. For the first time in thinking about these stories, I really considered the dogs involved; how much they just want approval, love. Food, shelter. How they would do anything for it; how they did.

Unmasked

I read about dogs: Spanish mastiffs, greyhounds.

Bred to track, chase, disembowel Indians.

Outfitted in metal and leather body armor, spiked

collars. Trained to eat human flesh - already

this story sounds cliché – next come babies’ brains

dashed out against rocks, Indians burned

alive, right? Well. Yes. And worse: women

raped to death, husbands bound hand and foot

beneath the bed. Open-air butcher markets

with Indian legs, arms, torsos hung on hooks, sold

to Spaniards too busy to hunt for dog food.

I close my eyes. Nothing changes.

They’re a small detail in my essay, nameless people.

A smaller blip in the cruel history of the Americas.

Hidden beneath words like battle, massacre, holocaust,

genocide, conquest, settlers, missions, colonists.

Progress. Deeper still under that noble camouflage:

souls of dogs contorted, distorted. Who raised

them from pups, fed them on fear? Who

taught them to eviscerate, decapitate human beings

with one snap of the jaws? These weren’t wolves

foraging for survival. Domesticated, dependent:

tools of the masters. Monsters created by human

beings. No. Monsters created by monsters.

Day 18: The Virtues of Honey

2011-04-18T21:08:00.003-04:00

Today I finished plans for a poetry workshop class trip to visit Whistle Creek Apiaries here in Kerr's Creek. In preparation, I've been reading articles and books about beekeeping, honey, and bees, trying to pull out sections that would be provide both educational information for students as well as some of that lovely "apiary" jargon that can help create the mood of a poem. Sometimes this just gives you an idea for a poem; other times, it can be a kind of 'found poem.' Or, a combination of the two.

So today, here is what I've cobbled together from two books in particular: Plan Bee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Hardest-Working Creatures on the Planet, by Susan Brackney, and Honeybee: Lessons From an Accidental Beekeeper, by C. Marina Marchese.

The Virtues of Honey

Truly, a spoonful of just-harvested, unpasteurized,

unfiltered honey tastes more complex than vintage

port wine; flavors infused by geography, rainfall,

soil conditions, time of harvest. Never quite the same

from season to season: spring extraction much lighter,

clearer than the darker late summer draw. Most

people like spring clover honey best, others

swear by dark, complex wildflower honeys. Black locust,

alfalfa, apple blossom, blueberry, even lavender -

flowery, fruity, spicy, resinous, burnt,

smooth, slippery, gritty, velvety, buttery,

watery, drippy, grainy, oily -

a good beekeeper keeps in touch with what’s

in bloom. Bees loyally work one type of flower

at a time, don’t mix their honeys, so honeycombs

shine like stained glass: “water white,” “white,”

“extra light amber,” “light amber,” “dark amber.”

Oldtimers talk about “mad honey,” when bees forage

on Rhododendron ponticum in the mountains.
Dizziness, nausea, vomiting, irregular

heartbeat; grayanotoxin is the culprit, but time cures all.

Medicinal properties abound: protein, antioxidants,

amino acids, vitamins, minerals. Chock-full

of pollen from local flora, honey is said to ease

allergies; a dose given to kids with upper

respiratory tract infections outperformed doses

of cough medicine. Honey has zero carbon footprint,

exploits no Third World workers, is local almost

everywhere. And every virtuous spoonful resounds

with Round Dance, Wagtail Dance, Grooming Dance.

Day 17: Eruption

2011-04-17T16:19:00.001-04:00

We have company coming tonight, so I'm trying to get my NaPoWriMo poem done earlier than usual. I turned to the NaPoWriMo website for a writing prompt, and this is the one I chose:

Today’s prompt is a prompt of erasure or, if you like, recombination. Below, I reproduce for your perusal a paragraph from Annie Dillard’s book, The Writing Life. Your mission is to create a poem, either by erasing words from the paragraph, or recombining the words that are already there (you don’t have to use all the words, of course. And you can add new words, if you wish.

“I pulled down the curtains. When I leaned over the typewriter, sparks burnt round holes in my shirt, and fire singed a sleeve. I dragged the rug away from the sparks. In the kitchen I filled a bucket with water and returned to the erupting typewriter. The typewriter did not seem to be flying apart, only erupting. On my face and hands I felt the heat from the caldera. The yellow fire made a fast, roaring noise. The typewriter itself made rumbling, grinding noise; the table pitched. Nothing seemed to require my bucket of water. The table surface was ruined, of course, but not aflame. After twenty minutes or so, the eruption subsided.”

And here is the poem I came up with, after much erasing, and a few tiny additions:

Eruption

Pull down

trees

lean over

lakes

sparks burn

fire singes

drags away

flies apart,

fast, roaring

rumble, grind

Nothing.

Birdsong:

Ruins,

but not aflame.

Day 16: Comfort Food

2011-04-16T22:05:00.003-04:00

Comfort Food

My mother made one hell of an apple pie.

She was always the first to suggest a raid

on Old Man Franklin’s orchard, fill paper bags

with the fruit of his tangled trees. Other days,

I’d come home to find strips of soft noodles

hanging from chair backs and curtain rods,

air of our small trailer humid with chicken broth.

Once, I remember hiking up the hill from the busstop

on a wave of Bisquick cinnamon coffee cake,

exotic and crusty with brown sugar. But best

of all were her enchiladas, rich with Old El Paso

sauce, cheese from the Food Bank, cheap

hamburger stretched with cut-up potato. To this day,

I can’t make them any other way. The truth

is, even Campbell’s Tomato Soup was heaven

if Mom made it: love in a can, saltines on the side.

The truth is, all I ever wanted was to receive
whatever she could give, and sometimes all
she could give came from that silver saucepan,
her battered skillet, aluminum pie tins. The rest
she kept to herself: measurements, ingredients,
recipes she’d inherited, felt best not passed on.

Day 15: Morning Yoga

2011-04-15T21:42:00.002-04:00

Morning Yoga

For Karen

Morning rocks, way down

in her passive pose.

She holds her rising intention:

release,

relax. She tucks her shoulders

back, rotates into

cobra, lengthens forward

out of her peach hips

comes up

tucks her pretty magenta chin

feels the scapula

behind her

burn.

Gently, slowly she looks

over her right

shoulder,

blinks

looks over

her left shoulder,

back to center.

Elbows on the cool earth,

Morning lengthens out

her hips

once more,

shoulder blades back

flaring

like the head of a cobra

tucks

and uncoils –

Morning stretches into

one-armed, one-legged locust pose:

lifts those stretching wings

breast smooth, unrestricted -

draws earth energy up

extends out her arm, her leg,

shoots a few rays

at fading stars

Morning breathes in

the pearly dew. Exhales.

Releases,

rides the easterly breeze.

Day 14: Spring, 2011

2011-04-14T20:15:00.005-04:00

Spring, 2011

Spring, 2011

On House Mountain, the oaks awaken inside their shaggy trunks,

black salamanders stir beneath last fall’s wet leaves. Red tulips

glow near the porch; redbuds burst right on time. It’s as if Fukushima

never happened; as if the earth doesn’t yet know she’s been poisoned,

her flesh is on fire. When my mother died, I didn’t want

anyone to ever laugh again. I raged at the daily news: how

could people get out of bed, make coffee, go to work? Didn’t

they realize the planet had just shifted on its axis? That the sun

itself had left the sky, melted into the earth? I wanted to stand

in the street and scream. PAY ATTENTION!! Everything has changed!

Why aren’t you prostrate with grief, wailing, cutting your hair,

covering your body with sackcloth and ashes? Why aren’t your tears

carving raw riverbeds in your cheeks? But I never did. I endured,
somehow; hoped for oak's tiny leaves, for flash of pink petals.

Day 13: Roxanna

2011-04-13T22:36:00.004-04:00

Roxanna

I clean for her every other Tuesday.

She lives in a 2 bedroom condo

with two kids under 7 and an ageing Sheltie

named Rufus. Her husband, stationed

in Afghanistan, exists only in a wedding portrait

hung at the top of the narrow stairs.

My first clue: Bobby’s bed-wetting,

Sara’s booger-art on the wall

of the upper bunk. Dead guppies

on the windowsill. Sara’s half-empty inhalers

stuffed into a Hello Kitty backpack.

Second clue: wading through empty bags

from every fast-food joint in Fircrest.

McDonald’s. Burger King. Dairy Queen,

Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Domino’s. In some places,

the ketchup-stained wrappers and Big Gulp

cups, napkins, plastic forks and spoons,

drift up to my knees. One bad week,

I run out of garbage bags, have to haul trash

out to the dumpster bundled in dirty towels.

By then, I know not to ask questions

about the love notes scrawled in pink lipstick

across the bathroom mirror, the plus-size

lingerie draped over chairs like spiderwebs,

the whispered, throaty phone dates

behind the locked bedroom door.

But the last clue that it is finally time to quit?

It isn’t the time I arrive to find Rufus’s fur

coated in peanutbutter, Bobby grinning

like a bright-eyed demon. I wash him

for Mommy! Or when he sprays cooking oil

on all the windows, the TV, into the VCR,

the computer, beams, I do Windex! I do shiny!

No, the day that breaks my heart comes

as I mop the kitchen floor that won’t dry.

Water pours out of the light fixture above me. I stare:

broken pipe? Leak from the roof? Miracle?

No. Bobby is upstairs in his mother’s shower,

playing Mutant Ninja Turtles while Roxanna

keeps a ‘date’ on the phone. In the dark.

I don’t remember dropping the mop. Don’t

remember the stairs. Just my fist

on the bedroom door, my palm pounding,

my fist, my palm – where is your son? where

is Bobby? And then, the shower: drain

plugged with a washcloth, Ninja Turtles swimming

in the warm water, water line on the glass

door approaching two feet high. Bobby,

laughing, splashing. Roxanna pulls open

the shower door, small tidal wave gushes

like water breaking. She grabs her son

and screams What are you doing?

It takes every towel in the house to dry

that floor. I throw them in the wash. I take out

five bags of garbage. All the time thinking, CPS.

I remember my mother’s binges, her vomit,

my dead sister, my loneliness. I remember foster care.

I remember my husband saying, If you leave me

for a woman, you’ll never see these kids again.

How many ways can mothers lose children?

How many times can children lose their mothers?

I go home, bathe my daughter, my son.
Read them stories. Put them to bed. All night,
I think about Roxanna's hands
gripping Bobby's thin white arms. Think
to myself, hang on. Hang on.

Day 12: Finals Week

2011-04-12T21:13:00.003-04:00

Finals Week
- from a student note

"This fell apart in transit.

It was a brain."

Pink temporal lobe, yellow

parietal lobe,

blue occipital , green frontal,

white cerebellum,

purple brain stem –

but somewhere between Main Street

and Baker Hall,

the pink temporal lobe

went one way,

blue occipital lobe, another.

Frontal and parietal

squished down

into cerebellum;

the brain stem

pancaked.

Now, it’s just a plastic

container full

of play-dough:

crusty

around the edges,

salty powder,

a little flaky.

Left outside my office door,

sad little note

resting on top.

I pick it up,

bring it inside.

Set it on my desk.

This used to be a brain.

It fell apart.

Day 10: Abcderian Poem for My Dog

2011-04-10T20:56:00.000-04:00

Abcderian Poem for My Dog

Around noon, I notice my dog has hauled home a deer leg,

brown and crusted with dirt from a winter in the woods,

covered with leaves. Lady doesn’t eat the bone; she

doesn’t even chew on the little black hoof. It’s

enough to have it, when her brother Chance does not.

For now, the two dogs glare at one another across the yard,

give each other the evil eye. Nostrils twitching, Chance

hopes his sister will fall asleep, wander away, need a drink;

I know this because it is his modus operandi. A quick

jump, the lunge, jowls flying, and Chance can make off with a

king-sized deer haunch like nobody’s business;

lickety-split, he’d be bound like a greyhound for the hills.

Might be, Lady won’t care. Sometimes she’s made her point:

not yours. MINE. But more likely, she’s feeling

ornery, flashes her bright canines, snarls sharp as glass,

paw snaps up, thwacks her brother’s face. Fool!

Quake before your Queen! and then, poor Chance,

rickety with shame, tail tucked, retreats. Pretends

something else interests him on the other side of the yard.

Today, he doesn’t even try; watches, tongue lolling,

until some mean human being strolls over, plastic bag

voluminous in her hand. Sweetly, the human asks,

what did you find, little girl? and stoops, drags the leg like a

xylophone key along the ground, into her bag,

yanks it away. Lady sighs. Today’s score: People, 1. Dogs,

zero. Only the deer have done worse.

Day 9: Journey Home

2011-04-09T21:19:00.003-04:00

Put me on a train, let me ride all the way from San Diego to Seattle. Let me sit in those deep wide seats, beside the long wide windows, and watch the land I love unroll like a beautiful gift, like a scroll with a story that keeps opening and opening, rich and full of sky and sand, oaks and hills, ocean, pines, snow… Let me drink in the old voices living there, let the old knowledge seep back into me. Feast my eyes? Ha! I am a glutton: unable to turn away, not wanting to sleep. Let the train rock me back and forth, jostle me over a rough spot in the track; let the steel wheels beneath the floor whine and sing.

Let the long slow grades ease us down from the mountains like a snake on a summer day; silver scales sparkling in the sun. Put me on a train and let the world shrink down to this one ragged coastline, let this narrow corridor become the only world that matters.

Going through Los Angeles, I’ll look for the dry cement banks of the river, see the homeless living in the mouths of drains that haven’t seen a drop of water in months. They know what they’re doing: blue tarps over the entrance, a battered lawn chair – would I manage as well? If I knew how to pray, I would pray for them, those people who never pray for rain.

San Juan Capistrano, San Fernando Rey de Espana, Santa Barbara. Let me pass by the adobe missions, the ridiculously renovated, the melting rubble, with tender thoughts for the souls of my ancestors. San Luis Obispo, San Miguel Arcangel, San Francisco Asis. They survived: that is the string of miracles I follow.

Day 8: DirecTV

2011-04-08T22:13:00.006-04:00

DirecTV

I can’t keep up. There’s a show about cutting

swamp timber (subtitled), a show about catching

crab (dangerous), a show about drag queens (fabulous!),

a show about surviving the wilds of Venezuela (exhausting),

a show about raising bears (claws), a show

about hauling ass across arctic ice (brrrr), a show

about swamp people (exotic), a show about crocodile

wranglers (ouch), two shows about dancing, one

about growing new body parts, one about chasing tornados,

one about cooking a full meal in 20 minutes

using dried ants, papaya fiber and orc meat. What

to do?? I DVR, sit up late at night, learn maniacal

uses for fondant, watch wars fought over cupcakes,

guys who eat tentacles still wiggling like – well –

tentacles, Australians who tile bathroom floors

in wife-beaters, wives who flip properties with

spatulas made in Thailand, cute gay guys painting

faux finish on living room walls, tough women

in pink toolbelts slinging hammers and circular saws

and I can’t keep up with any of them; sardines

and dragonfruit? spackle and fake cleavage?

axle grease and grizzly bears? Salsa and sandpaper?

Really? Someone’s going home this week, someone

gets a hot tub in the front yard, someone loses an arm,

someone’s wig flies off during Lipsync

for your Life. There’s no buffalo-oomp, it’s rather

under-whelming don’t you think? It’s in the bag.

It’s anyone’s guess. It’s seat-of-the-pants. It’s

time to switch channels to record “Dogs

or Gods,” I must press select if ok, otherwise

do nothing. Do nothing. Do. Nothing.

Day 7: Namesake

2011-04-07T19:55:00.000-04:00

Namesake

a scent what it is that is missing a child lost in a stone building an aroma that which I want a single cup of tea, steaming. a remembered taste something I once possessed longing for touch, comfort, belonging, a thing I have lost a world of details

being held. Desired. What I’m looking for, always no less specific why not excise them

entirely from the story? pared down what I want displacement is there a moment

presence suggests an exile find that for me the first moment of intimacy braiding her hair nothing to console her the room practically empty touched the flame to her temple what is the journey? with no break the tiny room that kind of suffering of all the stories I could tell redemption, is that how you see it? deal with it sitting on a piano bench memory’s

turning point strike press at an angle hold to your chest travel far from home

wonder have you ever seen a woman benediction or condemnation perfect transformation she is mother first death I had mourned a will to endure herself in the world a scent a memory a taste a desire the flame of her resistance awestruck by the flag on the moon pushing boundaries hold on through another lens dream true breaking live in the new astonishment is this a real story? keep different adopt us what you have bring speak eat succeed surrounded take leave what America does she inhabit? she takes me home she brings home to me foreign scared reject used only sensation watching given a story it tells us imagine epiphany imagine

Day 6: Advice to Would-be Saints

2011-04-06T17:47:00.001-04:00

So what I've realized is that this isn't really a poem a day; at least, not for this poet. NaPoWriMo is turning out to be more of a free-write a day. I never really have time to take the piece I've managed to dredge up into any kind of real conclusion. But at least I do get a taste of what an idea might become; and it's a heck of a lot more writing than I usually manage to accomplish while teaching.

Advice for Would-be Saints

Waiting for a miracle?

Don’t hold your breath.

Miracles aren’t seasonal;

they don’t go on sale. Sometimes,

you’ll stumble upon one -

just fell out of someone’s pocket

or got thrown out with the trash.

Don’t let it go to waste!

Don’t let it sit there, unused, until it starts to rot

or walks off, disgusted, looks

for a livelier companion.

Don’t stare and stare and stare,

not believing it’s real,

or that it will turn into a huge,

monstrous disaster if you touch it.

You know what happens

to those miracles. They die of broken hearts.

So pay attention! I’ve known folks

to sit right on top of a miracle

for years without ever seeing it. It shifts

and hiccups and shuffles its feet, wants

to catch some dumb schmuck’s attention,

but he’s so busy trying to find or steal

or otherwise construct

his specific miracle, he doesn’t notice.

Keep your eyes peeled. Take chances!

It’s a lot like bingo: you hit it,

or you don’t. But you’ll never know

if you never try. Sacrifice some shoe leather.

Donate some elbow grease. Miracles

take a lot of work. Sometimes,

a cantankerous miracle,

it’ll slap you right in the face.

I’m not saying neglected miracles

will cause a car accident, a heart attack,

loss of a loved one,

or sudden unemployment;

I’m just saying,

you sure see the miracle

of your child, your lover,

or your health insurance now,

don’t you? Ask yourself:

what miracle

am I avoiding today? Remember,

miracles like to be cherished.

And let’s be honest: they deserve it.

So what if most miracles are high-maintenance -

wouldn’t you be? Would you want one that wasn’t?

Didn’t think so.

Day 5: Aunt Josie’s Housekeeping, Inc.

2011-04-05T21:34:00.003-04:00

Aunt Josie’s Housekeeping, Inc.

I clean houses. I vacuum. I dust all the cheap ceramic knick knacks collected over a lifetime of distractions. I scrub the tub, the toilet, the edges of the sink, behind the faucets. I tote a bucket full of top-notch products: Pledge, PineSol, Comet, 409. I wield sponges with scratchy edges. I put away towels, mop hardwood floors with water and vinegar, sometimes on hands and knees if that’s what you like. I wash dishes encrusted with hard scraps, throw out fast food bags and Big Gulp cups, sweep up the spilled Cheerios. I find a corn plant growing in the soil between the edge of the linoleum and the baseboard of the kitchen sink. Illegal. I don’t pluck it out, leave it green, exuberant, the ribbony leaves spiraling up into the light of day. I clean houses. $10 an hour, no benefits, no sick leave. No union. I pull pornography out from under the playroom sofa, dump moldy plastic containers from the fridge, kneel before the vegetable bins in soapy attention. I feed the surviving goldfish, give the feral teddy bear hamster water, replace wet stinky cedar shavings from its cage with fresh chips. I put on rubber gloves to empty the overflowing cat box, scrape clay pellets hardened into a layer like sedimentary rock. I empty the garbage can in the master bedroom: used condoms and wrappers, torn pantyhose, toenail clippings. Kleenex. Pages ripped from a spiral notebook: “Why did I ever sleep with him? This affair was a terrible mistake. How could I have hurt so many people?” I polish the locked case beside the bed, carved of dark wood, smelling of weed and patchouli. I clean houses. I sop up secrets. I smooth out the wrinkles on the surface of lives for people too busy or too important to do it themselves. I’m a dark woman with a long black braid, walking across the lawn at the end of a long week. You don’t see me. You won’t remember me. Except for this poem, it’s like I was never there.

Day 4 - Mnemonic

2011-04-04T17:02:00.000-04:00

Not sure where this one's going, but it has some good images that I'd like to work on when I have more time.

Mnemonic

I was born on the San Andreas Fault. I carry

that promise of violence and destruction down

the center of my body like a zig-zag of lightning.

My father was born there, my mother too,

and all my brothers and sisters. Sometimes I think

that’s the only thing we still have in common:

born on the edge of a rippling continent

where the sun goes down over warm waters;

born in the shadow of mountains, between

desert and sea. Some of us got into cars

and drove north on long interstate freeways.

Some of us stayed not twenty miles

from our birthplace, bound by love or hate

or fear, unable to imagine a sunrise

without palm trees – or sun. Some of us

died, turned to dust inside incinerators

built for human flesh; parked our ashes

in a niche at Inglewood or scattered ourselves

in the green ripples at Tuolumne. Some

of us no longer speak to one another,

silent as rusty knives; others learn old languages

and make new songs out of loss. A few

of us have traveled too far, can never

come back. Others, not far enough.

Some of us travel only in the motes of dust

shining above the fractured chasms of earth.

And some of us return only in dreams

to sacred places where our feet have not

walked in this lifetime. Today, I wind

a string of shells around my wrist

four times, a bracelet strung so I can bear

the beauty of my homeland with me

wherever I go. The sharp edges bite

my skin, rattle soft as pebbles when I write

these words. Shells hang from my neck:

polished abalone, oceanic ovals of memory.

I was born on the San Andreas Fault.

I carry that rattlesnake in my spine, feel

the plates of a restless continent grind

and shift from tailbone to skull, a tectonic

rosary that keeps coming unstrung, keeps

this woman from ever losing her place.

You Bring Out the Abalone In Me

2011-03-01T11:12:00.000-05:00

You Bring Out the Abalone In Me

(after Sandra Cisneros)

You bring out the abalone in me.

The slick, slippery flesh in me.

The hard-silk iridescent shell.

The bitter tannin.

The acorn meat on the grinding stone

the pounding between stones that goes on for days.

For you, I would give up my white flour,

white sugar, lactose-laden milk addiction.

Eat your gourmet locovore meals,

decolonize my diet.

– uh-huh. Uh-huh.

For you.

You bring out the frenzied tail-whipping salmon in me.

The abalone mother of pearl in me.

The Monterey estuary thick with silver backs.

The thrashing homeward past grizzlies gorging with scaly grins.

The strategic wildfire in me.

The trigger of seeds snapping open.

The green flash of life in ashes.

The Big Sur tempest in me.

The rogue wave surge, swallow-tourists-

sweep-them-halfway-to-Hawaii-in-seconds in me.

The dolphin in me.

The legend of rainbow bridge, sinewy people of the sea in me.

The San Francisco quake n’ bake in me.

The fear of drought in me.

Yes, you do. You do.

You bring out the Bear Dance in me.

The Deer Dance of desire in me.

The Swordfish Dance stab in me.

The dove gray cocoon rattles in me.

The elderberry clappersticks in me.

The all night all day all night again Solstice song in me.

The Spanish soldado de cuera cruelty in me.

The priest’s cross decorated with feathers and shells in me.

Deer one. My tulecita,

I am the hunter you will lie down for,

those obsidian knife kisses along your jugular.

Your heart belongs to me,

no amar dios, no neofita, no kidnapped conversion.

I want to bathe in your blood and be cleansed.

I want to strip you naked as only pagans can be.

I want to caste out your demons

in the thick black air of the sweat lodge.

You bring out the abalone in me,

tanoch, and you like it.

You bring out the assassination of priests in me.

The burning-arrows-in-the-Mission-thatched-roofs in me.

The Tears of the Sun Rebellion in me.

The Toypurina guerilla woman leader in me.

The 1802 measles epidemic in me.

The God’s Will fever of smallpox in me.

The bad aguaguardiente home brew in me.

The San Andreas rattlesnake of jealousy.

The inter-generational post-colonial stress syndrome

late-night craving for wine in me. Ay.

I am savage. I am Coyote’s heathen twin.

I am the flooder of continents.

The hard white marble mountain top of creation.

The single footprint of the only survivor. You bring out

the pre-contact Eden in me.

The love-medicine concoction in me.

The U.S. government lie and ‘49er lust in me.

The Fifteen Unratified California Treaties in me.

Green turtle. Quicksilver. Black sand. Gold.

Mugwort. Cedar. White sage. Angelica root.

All you ancestors, saved and unsaved,

Momoy, Eagle,

I see you.

kaiusen cha’a me. sinne me xawan. sinne me.

kaiusen inlam. ka muisin. ka mec mui’sin exe.

Love the way an abalone woman loves. Let

me ruin you. Love the uncivilized way.

by Deborah A. Miranda

About this poem: Every year in my beginning poetry workshop, I assign one poem as an 'imitation' poem - students write their version of a published poet's work. This year, I assigned everyone the same poem: Sandra Cisneros's "You Bring Out the Mexican In Me." And, for the first time, I started to work on a California Indian version myself. It took about two months of writing just a few lines every day, then one long afternoon of polishing and revising to come up with something I'm happy to share. Thanks, Sandra, for the inspiration!