"oh antic God"

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?

if mama
could see
she would see   
lucy sprawling   
limbs of lucy
decorating the
backs of chairs
lucy hair
holding the mirrors up   
that reflect odd   
aspects of lucy.

if mama
could hear
she would hear
lucysong rolled in the
corners like lint
exotic webs of lucysighs
long lucy spiders explaining   
to obscure gods.

if mama
could talk
she would talk
good...

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward in the water 
     The great old owl is waking, day will go. 

Rest thee and fear not, little one, 
     Flitting fireflies come to light you on your way 
To the fair land of dreams, while in the grasses 
     The happy cricket chirps his merry lay. 

Tsa-du-meh watches always o’er her little one, 
     The great owl cannot harm you, slumber on 
’Till the pale light comes shooting from the eastward, 
     And the twitter of the birds says night has gone.

I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with golden chunks of pitch.
For his children
he provided this special sacrament
and we’d gather at this feet, around his legs,
bumping his lunchbox, and his empty thermos rattled inside.
Our skin would stick to Daddy's gluey clothing
and we’d smell like Mumma's Pine Sol.
We had no money for store bought gum
but that’s all right.
The spruce gum
was so close to chewing amber
as though in our mouths we held the eyes of Coyote
and how many other children had fathers
that placed on their innocent, anxious tongue
the blood of tree?

We have lived on the horizon for so long,
coasts no longer know our flags.

They buried us where they bury ships,
Commonwealth projects, and literary whales,
which represent no threat.

Someday, a great writer will claim
we were an idea the breadth of an ocean
and,...

 
Agnes only had nine years to live. The angels must have begun to hover around her canvas like monkeys. This canvas has nine white thin strips between the red and blue ones. I’ve spent my life thinking about the blue...

Home is a sound.
 I can hear it
in the western meadowlark, the inlaid rocks in my driveway,
 in the accent and slang
of my mom’s voice.
 It’s engrained
 in her stretched vowels,
in her smashed-together words, in her
 hard Rs,
and in the word rez.

I grew up hearing...

Her skin never wrinkled
And I used to wonder why

Her skin never wrinkled
As every year passed by

Look at Grandma's hands my mom would say
I bet you'd never think of how they stay that way

As she grew older
Her skin remained smooth and...