JOY HARJO
from IN MAD LOVE AND WAR
Transformations
This poem is a letter to tell you that I have smelled the hatred you have tried
to find me with; you would like to destroy me. Bone splintered in the eye of
one you chose to name your enemy won't make it better for you to see. It
could take a thousand years if you name it that way, but then, to see after all
that time, never could anything be so clear. Memory has many forms. When I
think of early winter I think of blackbird laughing in the frozen air; guards a
piece of light. (I saw the whole world caught in that sound, the sun stopped for
a moment because of tough belief.) I don't know what that has to do with what
I am trying to tell you except that I know you can turn a poem into something
else. This poem could be a bear treading the far northern tundra, smelling the
air for sweet alive meat. Or a piece of seaweed stumbling in the sea. Or a
blackbird, laughing. What I mean is that hatred can be turned into something
else, if you have the right words, the right meanings, buried in that tender place
in your heart where the most precious animals live. Down the street an am-
bulance has come to rescue an old man who is slowly losing his life. Not many
can see that he is already becoming the backyard tree he has tended for years,
before he moves on. He is not sad, but compassionate for the fears moving
around him.
That's what I mean to tell you. On the other side of the place you live stands
a dark woman. She has been trying to talk to you for years.
You have called the same name in the middle of a nightmare,
from the center of miracles. She is beautiful.
That is your hatred back. She loves you.
from IN MAD LOVE AND WAR
Transformations
This poem is a letter to tell you that I have smelled the hatred you have tried
to find me with; you would like to destroy me. Bone splintered in the eye of
one you chose to name your enemy won't make it better for you to see. It
could take a thousand years if you name it that way, but then, to see after all
that time, never could anything be so clear. Memory has many forms. When I
think of early winter I think of blackbird laughing in the frozen air; guards a
piece of light. (I saw the whole world caught in that sound, the sun stopped for
a moment because of tough belief.) I don't know what that has to do with what
I am trying to tell you except that I know you can turn a poem into something
else. This poem could be a bear treading the far northern tundra, smelling the
air for sweet alive meat. Or a piece of seaweed stumbling in the sea. Or a
blackbird, laughing. What I mean is that hatred can be turned into something
else, if you have the right words, the right meanings, buried in that tender place
in your heart where the most precious animals live. Down the street an am-
bulance has come to rescue an old man who is slowly losing his life. Not many
can see that he is already becoming the backyard tree he has tended for years,
before he moves on. He is not sad, but compassionate for the fears moving
around him.
That's what I mean to tell you. On the other side of the place you live stands
a dark woman. She has been trying to talk to you for years.
You have called the same name in the middle of a nightmare,
from the center of miracles. She is beautiful.
That is your hatred back. She loves you.
-------------
America [Try saying wren]
Joseph Lease
Try saying wren.
It’s midnight
in my body, 4 a.m. in my body, breading and olives and
cherries. Wait, it’s all rotten. How am I ever. Oh notebook.
A clown explains the war. What start or color or kind of
grace. I have to teach. I have to run, eat less junk. Oh CNN.
What start or color. There’s a fist of meat in my solar plexus
and green light in my mouth and little chips of dream flake
off my skin. Try saying wren. Try saying
mercy.
Try anything.
–------------
Lisa Fishman
Three Lyrics
FIELD
I kept the field
in a car abandoned there
and the steering wheel
had leather wreathing and the weeds were as tall
as the windows missing
So did the sumac come back to me
CREATURE
Cricket face, frog mouth, bird head
Tin shack, rattle-can, underside
Beetle leg, fishtail, cow hand
I did try
to remind you, creature
whose domicile surfaces
frame
REQUEST
If night becalmed I point to you
and thou be tied to dreaming
in a green eye, eel-green eye
closed, but roving follow
me, field me in flower
Be found
-------------------
Sherwin Bitsui
FROM Flood Song
I retrace and trace over my finger prints.
Here: magma
there: shore,
and on the peninsula of his finger pointing west -
a bell rope woven with optic nerves
is tethered to mustangs galloping from a nation lifting its first page
through the manhole - burn marks in the saddle horn,
static in the ear that cannot sever cries from wailing.
I did not blink shut
I could have hatched the egg
of the imagined Reservation
and not fear the quickening of my blood
or theirs pounding upright
in the money vault.
*
I walk my hair's length over tire ruts,
crush seedpods with thumbnails,
push kernels of corn
into dove nests on the gnarled branches of our drowned lungs.
Mining saguaro pulp from garden rock,
squeezing coarse black hair -
I arrive at a map of a face buried in spring snow.
With a plastic cup
I scrape the enamel chips of morning songs
from the kitchen sink,
and breathe through my eyelids,
glimpsing the thawing of our flat world.
**********
IF YOU GO INTO THE WOODS YOU WILL FIND IT HAS A TECHNOLOGY
Heather Christle
This tree has a small LED display
It is glowing and it can show you words
and it can show you pictures and it can melt
from one choice to another and you are looking at it
and it wants you to share the message
but it can’t see that you are the only one around
and that everyone else is hibernating
which you love You are so happy and alone
with the red and yellow lights It’s a nice day
to be in nature and to read up on the very bland ideas
this tree has about how to live This tree says
grow stronger and this tree says fireworks effect
This tree is the saddest prophet in history
but you don’t tell it that You are trying to show it respect
which gets tiresome but then it flashes
a snake at you It’s a kind of LED tree hybrid joke
and you could just kiss it for trying For failing
But it can’t see you and it starts to cry
(from What Is Amazing [Wesleyan University Press, 2012])
******************
Emergence
It's midsummer night. The light is skinny;
a thin skirt of desire skims the earth.
Dogs bark at the musk of other dogs
and the urge to go wild.
I am lingering at the edge
of a broken heart, striking relentlessly
against the flint of hard will.
It's coming apart.
And everyone knows it.
So do squash erupting in flowers
the color of the sun.
So does the momentum of grace
gathering allies
in the partying mob.
The heart knows everything.
I remember when there was no urge
to cut the land or each other into pieces,
when we knew how to think
in beautiful.
There is no world like the one surfacing.
I can smell it as I pace in my square room,
the neighbor's television
entering my house by waves of sound
makes me think about buying
a new car, another kind of cigarette
when I don't need another car
and I don't smoke cigarettes.
A human mind is small when thinking
of small things.
It is large when embracing the maker
of walking, thinking and flying.
If I can locate the sense beyond desire,
I will not eat or drink
until I stagger into the earth
with grief.
I will locate the point of dawning
and awaken
with the longest day in the world.
~ Joy Harjo ~
(Map to the Next World)
*****************
from the Natalie Diaz book When My Brother Was an Aztec
Love Potion 2012
Buzzards
able oarsman
drag black oars
dripping foam
commandeering this rat-gilded vessel and hull
full with ghosts
shoveling dead elephants across the menagerie deck
overboard
The smooth thick bones float
end over end wandering jagged ocean floor -
Patellae shifting like dandelion seed A Halloween mask
of pelvic bone roams a neighborhood in a dream Silvered
horseshoes of mandibles canter spitting sand
- tumbling skeletons of magnolia petals smitten by July
wind -
but none of this before the wrecked bodies
turn sponge and tusk
swell even as the gray flesh is carried
sucked away to the bellies of lamprey
Crustacea dressed in teeth
I am a fool
This is no sea Clouds not reef not stone
This heavy coat is atmosphere The vultures
dredge cast-iron ladles Not oars
Taste hearts and turnips
in their throats Sky is cauldron
How they stir
this awful elixir Gods and bombs
zagging through the air like coins
down an empty well No eye of newt
No hair of bezoar Mandrake either
Just the willingness to hold
to lie
quiet as a carcass
--------------------
Try saying wren.
It’s midnight
It’s midnight
in my body, 4 a.m. in my body, breading and olives and
cherries. Wait, it’s all rotten. How am I ever. Oh notebook.
A clown explains the war. What start or color or kind of
grace. I have to teach. I have to run, eat less junk. Oh CNN.
What start or color. There’s a fist of meat in my solar plexus
and green light in my mouth and little chips of dream flake
off my skin. Try saying wren. Try saying
mercy.
cherries. Wait, it’s all rotten. How am I ever. Oh notebook.
A clown explains the war. What start or color or kind of
grace. I have to teach. I have to run, eat less junk. Oh CNN.
What start or color. There’s a fist of meat in my solar plexus
and green light in my mouth and little chips of dream flake
off my skin. Try saying wren. Try saying
mercy.
Try anything.
Lisa Fishman
Three Lyrics
FIELD
I kept the field
in a car abandoned there
and the steering wheel
had leather wreathing and the weeds were as tall
as the windows missing
So did the sumac come back to me
CREATURE
Cricket face, frog mouth, bird head
Tin shack, rattle-can, underside
Beetle leg, fishtail, cow hand
I did try
to remind you, creature
whose domicile surfaces
frame
REQUEST
If night becalmed I point to you
and thou be tied to dreaming
in a green eye, eel-green eye
closed, but roving follow
me, field me in flower
Be found
-------------------
Sherwin Bitsui
FROM Flood Song
I retrace and trace over my finger prints.
Here: magma
there: shore,
and on the peninsula of his finger pointing west -
a bell rope woven with optic nerves
is tethered to mustangs galloping from a nation lifting its first page
through the manhole - burn marks in the saddle horn,
static in the ear that cannot sever cries from wailing.
I did not blink shut
I could have hatched the egg
of the imagined Reservation
and not fear the quickening of my blood
or theirs pounding upright
in the money vault.
*
I walk my hair's length over tire ruts,
crush seedpods with thumbnails,
push kernels of corn
into dove nests on the gnarled branches of our drowned lungs.
Mining saguaro pulp from garden rock,
squeezing coarse black hair -
I arrive at a map of a face buried in spring snow.
With a plastic cup
I scrape the enamel chips of morning songs
from the kitchen sink,
and breathe through my eyelids,
glimpsing the thawing of our flat world.
**********
IF YOU GO INTO THE WOODS YOU WILL FIND IT HAS A TECHNOLOGY
Heather Christle
This tree has a small LED display
It is glowing and it can show you words
and it can show you pictures and it can melt
from one choice to another and you are looking at it
and it wants you to share the message
but it can’t see that you are the only one around
and that everyone else is hibernating
which you love You are so happy and alone
with the red and yellow lights It’s a nice day
to be in nature and to read up on the very bland ideas
this tree has about how to live This tree says
grow stronger and this tree says fireworks effect
This tree is the saddest prophet in history
but you don’t tell it that You are trying to show it respect
which gets tiresome but then it flashes
a snake at you It’s a kind of LED tree hybrid joke
and you could just kiss it for trying For failing
But it can’t see you and it starts to cry
******************
Emergence
It's midsummer night. The light is skinny;
a thin skirt of desire skims the earth.
Dogs bark at the musk of other dogs
and the urge to go wild.
I am lingering at the edge
of a broken heart, striking relentlessly
against the flint of hard will.
It's coming apart.
And everyone knows it.
So do squash erupting in flowers
the color of the sun.
So does the momentum of grace
gathering allies
in the partying mob.
The heart knows everything.
I remember when there was no urge
to cut the land or each other into pieces,
when we knew how to think
in beautiful.
There is no world like the one surfacing.
I can smell it as I pace in my square room,
the neighbor's television
entering my house by waves of sound
makes me think about buying
a new car, another kind of cigarette
when I don't need another car
and I don't smoke cigarettes.
A human mind is small when thinking
of small things.
It is large when embracing the maker
of walking, thinking and flying.
If I can locate the sense beyond desire,
I will not eat or drink
until I stagger into the earth
with grief.
I will locate the point of dawning
and awaken
with the longest day in the world.
~ Joy Harjo ~
(Map to the Next World)
from the Natalie Diaz book When My Brother Was an Aztec
Love Potion 2012
Buzzards
able oarsman
drag black oars
dripping foam
commandeering this rat-gilded vessel and hull
full with ghosts
shoveling dead elephants across the menagerie deck
overboard
The smooth thick bones float
end over end wandering jagged ocean floor -
Patellae shifting like dandelion seed A Halloween mask
of pelvic bone roams a neighborhood in a dream Silvered
horseshoes of mandibles canter spitting sand
- tumbling skeletons of magnolia petals smitten by July
wind -
but none of this before the wrecked bodies
turn sponge and tusk
swell even as the gray flesh is carried
sucked away to the bellies of lamprey
Crustacea dressed in teeth
I am a fool
This is no sea Clouds not reef not stone
This heavy coat is atmosphere The vultures
dredge cast-iron ladles Not oars
Taste hearts and turnips
in their throats Sky is cauldron
How they stir
this awful elixir Gods and bombs
zagging through the air like coins
down an empty well No eye of newt
No hair of bezoar Mandrake either
Just the willingness to hold
to lie
quiet as a carcass
--------------------
--------------------
The Outstretched Earth
Do you know what whole fields are?
They are fields with a dog and a moon.
Do you know the answer — for the many?
Except there would be vineyards.
Meaning there would, as usual, be commerce.
Money, and a game of sorts to play it.
Meanwhile — Emma lost in the cover-crop.
Top of her head bobbing through mustard-flower.
It is, after all, still here —
The real world, the outstretched earth,
Rain, soil, copper for pennies.
Source: Poetry (January 2016).
----------------------------------
Do you know what whole fields are?
They are fields with a dog and a moon.
Do you know the answer — for the many?
Except there would be vineyards.
Meaning there would, as usual, be commerce.
Money, and a game of sorts to play it.
Meanwhile — Emma lost in the cover-crop.
Top of her head bobbing through mustard-flower.
It is, after all, still here —
The real world, the outstretched earth,
Rain, soil, copper for pennies.
Source: Poetry (January 2016).
----------------------------------
|
won’t you celebrate with me
Lucille Clifton, 1936 - 2010
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?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
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?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
-------------
From “summer, somewhere”
somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown
as rye play the dozens & ball, jump
in the air & stay there. boys become new
moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise
-blue water to fly, at least tide, at least
spit back a father or two. I won’t get started.
history is what it is. it knows what it did.
bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy
color of a July well spent. but here, not earth
not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt
turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language
for officer or law, no color to call white.
if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call
us dead, call us alive someplace better.
we say our own names when we pray.
we go out for sweets & come back.
•
this is how we are born: come morning
after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig
a new boy from the ground, take
him out his treebox, shake worms
from his braids. sometimes they’ll sing
a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!)
sometimes it’s they eyes who lead
scanning for bonefleshed men in blue.
we say congrats, you’re a boy again!
we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance.
we send him off to wander for a day
or ever, let him pick his new name.
that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing.
that man Sean named himself I do, I do.
O, the imagination of a new reborn boy
but most of us settle on alive.
•
sometimes a boy is born
right out the sky, dropped from
a bridge between starshine & clay.
one boy showed up pulled behind
a truck, a parade for himself
& his wet red gown. years ago
we plucked brothers from branches
unpeeled their naps from bark.
sometimes a boy walks into his room
then walks out into his new world
still clutching wicked metals. some boys
waded here through their own blood.
does it matter how he got here if we’re all here
to dance? grab a boy, spin him around.
if he asks for a kiss, kiss him.
if he asks where he is, say gone.
•
no need for geography
now that we’re safe everywhere.
point to whatever you please
& call it church, home, or sweet love.
paradise is a world where everything
is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun.
here, if it grows it knows its place
in history. yesterday, a poplar
told me of old forest
heavy with fruits I’d call uncle
bursting red pulp & set afire,
harvest of dark wind chimes.
after I fell from its limb
it kissed sap into my wound.
do you know what it’s like to live
someplace that loves you back?
•
here, everybody wanna be black & is.
look — the forest is a flock of boys
who never got to grow up, blooming
into forever, afros like maple crowns
reaching sap-slow toward sky. watch
Forest run in the rain, branches
melting into paper-soft curls, duck
under the mountain for shelter. watch
the mountain reveal itself a boy.
watch Mountain & Forest playing
in the rain, watch the rain melt everything
into a boy with brown eyes & wet naps —
the lake turns into a boy in the rain
the swamp — a boy in the rain
the fields of lavender — brothers
dancing between the storm.
•
if you press your ear to the dirt
you can hear it hum, not like it’s filled
with beetles & other low gods
but like a mouth rot with gospel
& other glories. listen to the dirt
crescendo a boy back.
come. celebrate. this
is everyday. every day
holy. everyday high
holiday. everyday new
year. every year, days get longer.
time clogged with boys. the boys
O the boys. they still come
in droves. the old world
keeps choking them. our new one
can’t stop spitting them out.
somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown
as rye play the dozens & ball, jump
in the air & stay there. boys become new
moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise
-blue water to fly, at least tide, at least
spit back a father or two. I won’t get started.
history is what it is. it knows what it did.
bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy
color of a July well spent. but here, not earth
not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt
turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language
for officer or law, no color to call white.
if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call
us dead, call us alive someplace better.
we say our own names when we pray.
we go out for sweets & come back.
•
this is how we are born: come morning
after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig
a new boy from the ground, take
him out his treebox, shake worms
from his braids. sometimes they’ll sing
a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!)
sometimes it’s they eyes who lead
scanning for bonefleshed men in blue.
we say congrats, you’re a boy again!
we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance.
we send him off to wander for a day
or ever, let him pick his new name.
that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing.
that man Sean named himself I do, I do.
O, the imagination of a new reborn boy
but most of us settle on alive.
•
sometimes a boy is born
right out the sky, dropped from
a bridge between starshine & clay.
one boy showed up pulled behind
a truck, a parade for himself
& his wet red gown. years ago
we plucked brothers from branches
unpeeled their naps from bark.
sometimes a boy walks into his room
then walks out into his new world
still clutching wicked metals. some boys
waded here through their own blood.
does it matter how he got here if we’re all here
to dance? grab a boy, spin him around.
if he asks for a kiss, kiss him.
if he asks where he is, say gone.
•
no need for geography
now that we’re safe everywhere.
point to whatever you please
& call it church, home, or sweet love.
paradise is a world where everything
is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun.
here, if it grows it knows its place
in history. yesterday, a poplar
told me of old forest
heavy with fruits I’d call uncle
bursting red pulp & set afire,
harvest of dark wind chimes.
after I fell from its limb
it kissed sap into my wound.
do you know what it’s like to live
someplace that loves you back?
•
here, everybody wanna be black & is.
look — the forest is a flock of boys
who never got to grow up, blooming
into forever, afros like maple crowns
reaching sap-slow toward sky. watch
Forest run in the rain, branches
melting into paper-soft curls, duck
under the mountain for shelter. watch
the mountain reveal itself a boy.
watch Mountain & Forest playing
in the rain, watch the rain melt everything
into a boy with brown eyes & wet naps —
the lake turns into a boy in the rain
the swamp — a boy in the rain
the fields of lavender — brothers
dancing between the storm.
•
if you press your ear to the dirt
you can hear it hum, not like it’s filled
with beetles & other low gods
but like a mouth rot with gospel
& other glories. listen to the dirt
crescendo a boy back.
come. celebrate. this
is everyday. every day
holy. everyday high
holiday. everyday new
year. every year, days get longer.
time clogged with boys. the boys
O the boys. they still come
in droves. the old world
keeps choking them. our new one
can’t stop spitting them out.
-------------
from the Robin Coste Lewis award winning book Voyage of the Sable Venus and other poems:
Summer
Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin
on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being
postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see
them, nor understand what I knew to be circling
inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son
to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled
a banana. And cursed God - His arrogance,
His gall - to still expect our devotion
after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed
my son the papery dead skin so he could
know, too, what it feels like when something shows up
at your door - twice - telling you what you already know.
--------------------------
and here's the poem Robin Coste Lewis read at her National Book Awards acceptance speech:
"KEEPING QUIET" BY PABLO NERUDA
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no trick with death.
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no trick with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
and you keep quiet and I will go.
—from Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid, pp. 27-29, 1974)
----------------------------------------
from FLOOD SONG
Sherwin Bitsui
I bite my eyes shut between these songs.
They are the sounds of blackened insect husks
folded over elk teeth in a tin can,
they are gull wings fattening on cold air
flapping in a paper sack on the chlorine-stained floor.
They curl in corners, spiked and black-thatched,
stomp across the living-room ceiling,
pull our hair one stand at a time from electric sockets
and paint our stems with sand in the kitchen sink.
They speak a double helix,
zigzag a tree trunk,
bark the tips of its leaves with cracked amber-
they plant whispers where shouts incinerate into hisses.
----------------
by Roque Dalton:
On Modern Applied Sciences
Ecology is the echo
produced by the noise
with which capitalism is destroying the world.
So, independent of what the University says,
ecology is more than a science is
a discreet veil, a lubricating ointment and,
in the best of cases,
a scientific technical aspirin.
Of its validity and efficacy it can be said
that while capitalist destruction
continues producing profits for the owners of the world
and is more important than environmental conservation,
the only possibility ecology has
for being important
is to continue being a business.
- from Poemas. Antología, San Salvador, 1968
(translated by Jack Hirschman in the 1970s)
------------
three now from Joy Harjo from this book:
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