POETRY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST:
THE ARC OF THE EDIFICE
NATIVE PEOPLE of the Northwest had no choice but to live in relation to poetry from the very outset of creation. We had to learn to identify and convert the individual elements of earth into forms of protection and sustenance, a so-called lifestyle. This would involve courtship, and gathering of every necessary berry, moss, bark, and wood. I remember stories of Suquamish women leaving for several days on summer journeys over the Cascade Mountains into eastern Washington to gather luminous bear grass, those pieces that would sometimes tell stories along the outer surface of our baskets.
This draping of my history within the landscape has become an available arc that we tap into at will. Michael Wasson’s “Poem for the háawtnin’ & héwlekipx” [The Holy Ghost of You, the Space & Thin Air] is driven by a similar recognition as well as a willingness to reveal aspects of composition within the poem itself:
I imagine
smudging my tongue along a wall
like the chest
I dare to plunge in-
to, the Braille of every node
blooming out
as if the first day-
light of wintered
snowfall.
The surfaces gained in Wasson’s poem are intensely reflective, throwing light at every break in the line. The poem forms an enclosure around its reader; nothing so simple as a hall of mirrors, this feels more like an alchemical bath. The poet is being reborn and seemingly splintered back into the natural world.
Gloria Bird is another master of the lyric, often leaving a secret door (or mirror) in the turn of her lines, hinting at another arc the poem might have taken. She dissolves the needless walls between syllables through an ingrained, behind-the-beat feel for phrasing, and this hypnotic rhythm often takes the lead in unlocking her expansive imagery:
appointed places set in motion like seasons. We are like salmon
swimming against the mutation of current to find
our heartbroken way home again, weight of red eggs and need
Duane Niatum’s lines are as deeply graven as those of any bent-wood box or totem carving. His work reminds us that poetry can incur the weight and grandeur of a ceremonial object. I seem to remember his poems as a series of interconnected, colorful weavings intent on charting a poet’s journey in and out of the realm of magic. He seems to soar above the poem as it is being uncovered and to light each of his images individually:
I camp in the light of the fox
Within the singing mirror of night,
Hunt for courage to return to the voice
Whirling my failures through the meadow
Elizabeth Woody’s work uses elements of traditional art-making to recast her tribal narrative as one of continued survival. Her poems feel like power deconstructed, as only a sculptor might attempt, language arranged into objects we cannot turn away from. We witness her incredible agency and all-enveloping tone throughout “Translation of Blood Quantum”:
THIRTY-SECOND PARTS OF A HUMAN BEING
SUN MOON EVENING STAR AT DAWN CLOUDS
RAINBOW CEDAR
LANGUAGE COLORS AND SACRIFICE LOVE
THE GREAT FLOOD
THE TORTOISE CARRIES THE PARROT HUMMINGBIRD TRILLIUM
After breaking into this imaginative and itemized list (this is only an excerpt), she goes on to detail her sense of what a politics of self-determination looks like and how to actualize this energy within our work:
Our Sovereignty is permeated, in its possession
of our individual rights, by acknowledgment of good
for the whole
and this includes the freedom of the Creator in these teachings
given to and practiced by The People.
Poetry can contain so many types of voices within one instance of writing; its restlessness and need for flexibility are two of its greatest strengths. This sensation can border upon utopia as syllabic, concrete-sounding sections of a poem may lie next to restorative political strategies and then begin to break into rhythms of incantation and chant. I tend to cast Elizabeth Woody’s work in a heroic light because of her unwavering willingness to write the world she wants to live in as well as for her willingness to speak for more than just herself. She defines our struggle as ongoing, as an eternal and aspirational state, a substance from which we are meant to form poetry as well as to speak out in protest. Her poem is reminiscent of Chief Seattle’s speech during the treaty negotiations of 1854 addressing then-governor of Washington State, Isaac Stevens:
And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe; and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone in the fields, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.
Just as we first formed a poetry out of our literal surroundings, we then had to move on to preserving these traditions as they were quickly becoming outlawed by the U.S. government. When elements of trauma begin to surface within our histories, the action begins to be told in reverse. To this day we are still fighting to be seen as living, breathing, contemporary artists.
I have come to think of Native Poets as warrior/prophets that can move (almost routinely) beyond our own bodies. We are hovering, scribing entities, free to drop back into our trenches as needed. It is the poems themselves that provide the bedrock for further resistance and redefinition. Becoming a better listener is also such a huge part of becoming a more complete poet, to always leave ourselves open to new frequencies. This collection will no doubt spark new changes and touchstones for artists of every discipline.
POETRY OF ALASKA
ALASKA—A RUGGED LAND of gold; the great land; the last frontier—these are the descriptions of newcomers, but for Alaska Native people it is life, and the home of ancestors. In contrast, the seven Iñupiaq, five Tlingit, one Yup´ik, two Athabascan, and one Aleut (Tangirnaq) writers reflect an eternal connection to place that runs through their veins cycling through the generations.
Beginning with the singing words shared by Lincoln Blassi appealing to the “Whale of distant ocean,” the intimate knowledge of land and sea offerings of the treeless and windswept St. Lawrence Island is evident. In this most remote northwestern environment and Siberian Yup´ik culture, time is polychronic, cyclical, as it is with all Alaska’s indigenous peoples and is clear in this reverence of the whale harvest season. Respect of the landscape and what it holds is an important thread for continuance—the people are not separate from the landscape but a part of it. They belong to it. It is this that is shared from one indigenous group to the next in this vast and diverse land called Alaska.
There are loosely seven different regions of Alaska that by their size and geographic differences could be countries within their own right: Southeast, Northeast, Aleutians, Northwest, North, South Central, and the Interior. Unlike many other tribes in the United States, Alaskan tribes still exist on the very land of their ancestors. The Alaskan poets represented here have all had the benefit of either living in their community of origin, or returning to it.
Alaskan tribes speak twenty distinct languages and numerous dialects. Each distinct language is representative of a distinct culture intrinsically woven into time and space of place. Language represents not only the values and social systems but the relationship to land and to its subsequent spiritual realities. Interestingly, we see this even in English—in the poems of the poets across the generations from “Spirit Moves,” by Fred Bigjim, to “Anatomy of a Wave” by Abigail Chabitnoy. The voices of the old ones, the dark secrets held by the landscape, are present in the poetry. And all the while life, indigenous life, insists on finding a way.
The regions of Alaska that are the origins of these poets are the terrain of their poetic souls.
Contained by glacial fields, Southeast Alaska’s spruce-covered mountains dive into the sea, facing islands and rugged coasts, where rain can be relentless. It is a place of abundance—rich with berries, mammals, deer, sea greens, and fish. Tlingit story, friendship, and life all revolve through the sharing of this wealth no matter the location, as in “How to make good baked salmon from the river” by Nora Marks Dauenhauer. Although having to adapt, ancestral relatives are still present and remembered and all are nourished.
Family is always central, and for the Interior Athabascans life along the many rivers and birch-wooded forests through harsh winters and hot, dry summers is reliant on their unity and reciprocity. Although Dian Million was removed from Alaska at the age of twelve, she illustrates this timeless principle in “The Housing Poem.” Mary TallMountain, also of the same region and similar circumstance, alliterates the sharing of grease from caribou, and gently brings home to the reader the deeply held bonds that go beyond time and distance in her two poems, “Good Grease” and “There is No Word for Goodbye.”
The voice of Alaska Native poets began to challenge the status quo and twist the canon around the end of World War Two, when Alaska Native people became the minority demographic: many were forced off to boarding schools, and traditions and languages were banned. Conflicting worldviews and painful ironies emerge as acculturation meets cultural studies in “At the Door of the Native Studies Director,” by Robert Davis Hoffman. Andrew Hope III, in one of his less minimalist poems, “Spirit of Brotherhood,” creates a cross-rhythmic theme of religion and cultural adaptation as he situates the cultural placement of the oldest Native American organization, the Alaska Native Brotherhood.
Dominant in much of the Alaskan poetry is the reality of loss, cultural disruption, and the effort to reconcile cultural existence in a continually colonizing and commodifying world. What is notable is that voice is given to these themes primarily by more recent poets. This is evident in a number of poems by Iñupiaq writers Joan Kane, Cathy Tagnak Rexford, Carrie Ayaġaduk Ojanen, and Ishmael Hope—all of whom were born long after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. Internal and external struggles are laid bare in the poetry and are seemingly interwoven into historical trauma and circumpolar politics by this generation now coping with the undeniable urgency of global threats to subsistence and humanity, climate change, and war. Inupiat are on the front line of the north, and these poets, perhaps influenced by the activists before them, speak to current issues and their own fragility juxtaposed with Alaskan Native life that often appears to be teetering on the edge. Even in the darkness, there remains a glowing undercurrent of perseverance.
POETRY OF THE PACIFIC
THROUGH INCORPORATED and unincorporated territories, free associated states, and ocean monuments, the United States currently controls one-third of the Pacific Ocean, which itself comprises one-third of the earth’s surface. Continuing manifest destiny beyond the continental borders, the United States formally annexed Hawaiʻi and Guåhan (Guam) in 1898 and Amerika Sāmoa in 1900 to bolster militarization and trade in the Asia-Pacific region. Though dominant historical narratives are vague and imply that American colonialism has been benevolent and beneficial for us, they conveniently omit the violence behind the establishment and ongoing maintenance of American empire in (and because of the location of) our islands in the Pacific. These colonial stories also enable tourism, another leading economic industry in our region, to profit from exploitative images of us as happy, simple natives living in a paradise that is open and ready to serve.
If you ask for our stories, however, you will likely hear our poetry, the genre we tend to prefer, which stands as testament to the superficiality and brevity of the United States in the Pacific; to the resilience, ingenuity, and strength of our communities; and to our fierce love for our islands and ocean, our cultures, and our ancestors. It would not be an overstatement to share that there is a poet, an orator with a love and healthy reverence for the power of language, in every Pacific family. Therefore, this section showcases only a few of the poets from Hawai‘i, Amerika Sāmoa, and Guåhan and should definitely not be considered exhaustive. There are many others whose powerful, wise, inspiring, and talented voices fill other books and anthologies, lift our peoples through movements and rallies, heal our hearts, and nourish our imaginations.
Given the diversity of our cultures, languages, histories, and political issues in the Pacific, I will treat each Pacific archipelago separately and begin with Hawaiʻi, as the Pacific selections start with the first wā (epoch) in the Kumulipo, a genealogical chant tracing more than eight hundred human generations—as well as plant and animal ancestors—that emerge after the universe comes into being. The first wā details cosmogenesis as spontaneous and generative, ending with the birth of night. Though the Kumulipo was first recorded in writing under the direction of King David Kalākaua, who reigned from 1874 to 1891, Queen Liliʻuokalani began the translation in 1895 while imprisoned in ‘Iolani Palace in Honolulu and completed it in 1897 in Washington, D.C., as she lobbied against Hawaiʻi’s annexation to the United States. The Kumulipo has since become one of the most important poems of our people.
Literary scholar and poet kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui uses the metaphor of the haku (braided) lei to describe how Hawaiian poems use overlapping meanings, interweave traditions, and yet adhere to craft and structure. Though applied to Hawaiian poetry, the metaphor holds true for all of the contemporary Pacific selections that follow. We begin with John Dominis Holt’s “Ka ʻIli Pau,” a poem reflecting on how we are continuations of our ancestors, and Leialoha Perkins’ “Plantation Non-Song,” a strong indictment of Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations for fostering “ghettos of mind, slums of the heart.” Holt first published in 1965 and Perkins in 1979, following the near extinction of the Hawaiian language and other forms of colonial silencing since annexation in 1898. The next generation of poets began writing in the 1980s and ’90s—Imaikalani Kalahele, Michael McPherson, Mahealani Perez-Wendt, Dana Naone Hall, Joe Balaz, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, and Haunani-Kay Trask. Their poems are emblematic of their political activism and ancestrally rooted commitment to social and environmental justice. Kalahele’s “Make Rope,” McPherson’s “Clouds, Trees, & Ocean: North Kauaʻi,” Balaz’s “Charlene,” Westlake’s “Hawaiians Eat Fish,” and Trask’s “Night is a Sharkskin Drum” and “Koʻolauloa” emphasize continuance and ongoing connections to ʻāina (land) and suggest we are able to move between ancestral time and our own. In these poems, the poet’s duty is to “become the memory of our people” (Kalahele). Perez-Wendt’s “Uluhaimalama,” Hall’s “Hawaiʻi ’89,” and Trask’s “Agony of Place” lay bare and fight the ravages of American colonialism “grinding vision/ from the eye, thought/ from the hand/ until a tight silence/ descends” (Trask), while also taking spiritual sustenance in ancestral connection and the land’s enduring beauty, “feast[ing] well/ On the stones” (Perez-Wendt) and “blooming [like kokiʻo] on the long branch” (Hall). Notably, much of the poetry of this period is lyrical and elegaic, yet insistent on how healing is rooted in our return to culture and ʻāina.
Poets who began writing in the 2000s and 2010s, including Christy Passion, Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Noʻu Revilla, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, and myself, share intimate portraits of ʻohana (family) and continue the work of truth-telling and memory-keeping alongside political activism and community engagement. As it was for the poets before us, ancestral connection, which includes human, plant, and animal ancestors, is a significant thematic thread, one that informs a predilection for decoloniality. My sonnet series “Ka ʻŌlelo” allays the trauma of the English-only law through a love song for my grandfather and ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language); and “He Mele Aloha no ka Niu” honors the generosity of the niu, or coconut. Passion’s “Hear the Dogs Crying” and Colleps’s “Kiss the Opelu” lovingly invoke sonicality in rendering their grandmothers’ stories. Similarly, the moving “Smoke Screen” by Revilla imagines her father’s days working at the sugar mill where he “marr[ied] metal in his heavy/ gloves . . . He was always burning into something.” The last of the Pacific selections, Osorio’s “Kumulipo,” is a spoken-word poem referencing Liliʻuokalani’s Kumulipo and voicing her own genealogy to stave off colonial forgetting. Perhaps diverging from their predecessors, these poets openly reflect on issues of cultural and political identity, including language, gender, and sexual identity, and use the lyric and other forms to show the trauma of colonial loss and violence experienced by the ʻohana, while also affirming a strong commitment to justice and sovereignty.
The work of American empire and militarism has also meant Indigenous displacement and a growing Pacific Islander diaspora—to the point that some off-island populations outnumber their on-island kin. In their poetry collections Dan Taulapapa McMullin (from Amerika Sāmoa), Craig Santos Perez (who is CHamoru from Guåhan), and Lehua M. Taitano (who is also CHamoru from Guåhan) all write from the diaspora, sharing their individual stories of having to leave their home islands. Here, McMullin’s “Doors of the Sea” lyrically follows an overseas journey that separates brothers and plays with gendered language, a signature of McMullin’s faʻafafine (non-binary) perspective. Perez’s “ginen the micronesian kingfisher [i sihek]” mourns the loss of birdsong after U.S. military ships brought brown tree snakes to the island and details colonial efforts to save the Micronesian kingfisher. Finally, Taitano’s “Letters from an Island” offers us a glimpse into a family’s correspondence between Guåhan and the continental United States. Both Perez and Taitano are avant-garde poets who incorporate CHamoru language and culture, visuality, history, and politics into their poetics. Collectively, these writers, like others in the Pacific, are creating new literatures in order to honor our ancestors, remember our histories, revitalize our cultures, decolonize our islands and ocean, and imagine sovereign futures.
The Kumulipo is a Hawaiian creation chant. Below is the version recorded in writing under the direction of King David Kalākaua. The accompanying translation into English was completed by Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1897. King Kalākaua reigned over the Hawaiian Kingdom from 1874 until his death in 1891. His sister, Queen Liliʻuokalani, succeeded him on the throne. They were the last two monarchs of the Hawaiian Kingdom before the U.S. military–backed overthrow in 1895.
O ke au i kahuli wela ka honua
O ke au i kahuli lole ka lani
O ke au i kukaiaka ka la.
E hoomalamalama i ka malama
O ke au o Makali’i ka po
O ka walewale hookumu honua ia
O ke kumu o ka lipo, i lipo ai
O ke kumu o ka Po, i po ai
O ka lipolipo, o ka lipolipo
O ka lipo o ka la, o ka lipo o ka po
Po wale hoi
Hanau ka po
[Translation into English]
At the time that turned the heat of the earth,
At the time when the heavens turned and changed,
At the time when the light of the sun was subdued
To cause light to break forth,
At the time of the night of Makalii (winter)
Then began the slime which established the earth,
The source of deepest darkness.
Of the depth of darkness, of the depth of darkness,
Of the darkness of the sun, in the depth of night,
It is night,
So was night born
CHIEF SEATTLE (1786–1866), Suquamish and Duwamish. The city of Seattle, Washington, is named after Chief Seattle, who ruled over both the Suquamish and the Duwamish though the two tribes were separated by the Puget Sound. In addition to his leadership skills and his ability to understand the intentions of the white settlers, he was also a noted orator in the Northern Lushootseed language. During the treaty proposals of 1854, Chief Seattle delivered a speech that is still remembered today. At the time of his death, protests over treaty rights and resettlement were still ongoing.
Excerpts from a Speech by Chief Seattle, 1854
The speech was originally transcribed by Dr. Henry Smith into a trade language known as Chinook Jargon before he attempted his own translation into English. The speech was transcribed into Northern Lushootseed by Vi Hilbert, July 27, 1985, then subsequently into English.
Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you forget.
The red man could never comprehend nor remember it. Our religion is the tradition of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given to them in the solemn hours of the night by the great spirit and the visions of our leaders, and it is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb; they wander far away beyond the stars and are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They always love its winding rivers, its sacred mountains, and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit, guide and comfort them.
We will ponder your proposition, and when we decide we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make this the first condition that we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will the graves where we have buried our ancestors, and our friends and our children. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe.
Even the rocks which seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the lives of my people.
And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe; and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone in the fields, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.
At night when the streets of your cities and villages will be silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.
Dead—did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
[Translated by Vi Hilbert]
LINCOLN BLASSI (1892–1980), St. Lawrence Island Yup´ik, was born in Gambell, Alaska, where he worked as a whaling harpooner. The story of his childhood appeared in the July and August 1978 issues of Alaska Magazine. As the number of the region’s whales decreased, Blassi sold his ceremonial whaling gear, which the ethnographer Otto Geist acquired for the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
Prayer Song Asking for a Whale
(told in St. Lawrence Island Yup´ik)
IVAGHULLUK ILAGAATA
Ighivganghani, eghqwaaghem elagaatangi taakut atughaqiit. Ilagaghaqut angyalget taakut. Ivaghullugmeng atelget.
Elngaatall, repall tusaqnapangunatengllu. Nangllegsim angtalanganeng, wata eghqwaalleghmi tawani nangllegnaghsaapiglluteng ilaganeghmeggni iglateng qughaghteghllaglukii piiqegkangit. Nangllegsim angtalanganeng Kiyaghneghmun.
Uuknaa-aa-aanguu-uuq.
Saamnaa-aa-aanguu-uuq,
Taglalghii-ii-ii saa-aamnaa.
Ketangaa-aan aghveghaa-aa saa-aamnaa-aa
Aghvelegglaguu-uu-lii.
Ellngalluu-uu-uu.
Qagimaa iluganii-ii-ii.
Uuknaa-aa-aanguu-uuq.
Saamnaa-aa-aanguuq,
Taglalghii-ii-ii saa-aamnaa.
Ketangaa-aa-aan ayveghaa-aa saa-aamna.
Aghvelegllaaguluu-uu-lii
Elngaa-aa-aalluu-uungu-uuq
Qagimaa iluganii-ii-ii.
Uuknaa-aa-aanguu-uuq.
Saamnaa-aa-aanguu-uuq
Taglalghii-ii-ii saa-aamnaa.
Ketangaa-aan maklagaa-aa-aanguuq.
Aghvelegllaguulii-ii-iingii.
Ellngalluu-uu-uu.
Qagimaa iluganii-ii-ii-ngiy.
Before the whaling season, the boat captain would sing ceremonial songs in the evening. The ceremony of singing was called ivaghulluk.
The boat captain would sing these songs in such a low reverent voice that you could hardly make out the words. Especially before the whaling season began, the songs of petition were sung to God in a prayerful pleading voice.
The time is almost here.
The season of the deep blue sea . . .
Bringing good things from the deep blue sea.
Whale of distant ocean . . .
May there be a whale.
May it indeed come . . .
Within the waves.
The time is almost here.
The season of the deep blue sea . . .
Bringing good things from the deep blue sea.
Walrus of distant ocean . . .
May there be a whale.
May it indeed come . . .
Within the waves.
The time is almost here.
The season of the deep blue sea . . .
Bringing good things from the deep blue sea.
Bearded seal of distant ocean . . .
May there be a whale.
May it indeed come . . .
Within the waves.
MARY TALLMOUNTAIN (1918–1994), Koyukon, was a poet, stenographer, and educator. Born in Nulato, Alaska, along the Yukon River, she was adopted and relocated to Oregon. In her later years she moved to San Francisco, started her own stenography business, and began to write poetry. She is the author of The Light on the Tent Wall (1990), A Quick Brush of Wings (1991), and the posthumous collection Listen to the Night (1995). While living in San Francisco she founded the Tenderloin Women Writers Workshop, which supported women’s literary expression.
The hunters went out with guns
at dawn.
We had no meat in the village,
no food for the tribe and the dogs.
No caribou in the caches.
All day we waited.
At last!
As darkness hung at the river
we children saw them far away.
Yes, they were carrying caribou!
We jumped and shouted!
By the fires that night
we feasted.
The Old Ones chuckled,
sucking and smacking,
sopping the juices with sourdough bread.
The grease would warm us
when hungry winter howled.
Grease was beautiful—
oozing,
dripping and running down our chins,
brown hands shining with grease.
We talk of it
when we see each other
far from home.
Remember the marrow
sweet in the bones?
We grabbed for them like candy.
Good.
Gooooood.
Good grease.
Sokoya, I said, looking through
the net of wrinkles into
wise black pools
of her eyes.
What do you say in Athabascan
when you leave each other?
What is the word
for goodbye?
A shade of feeling rippled
the wind-tanned skin.
Ah, nothing, she said,
watching the river flash.
She looked at me close.
We just say, Tłaa. That means,
See you.
We never leave each other.
When does your mouth
say goodbye to your heart?
She touched me light
as a bluebell.
You forget when you leave us;
you’re so small then.
We don’t use that word.
We always think you’re coming back,
but if you don’t,
we’ll see you some place else.
You understand.
There is no word for goodbye.
JOHN DOMINIS HOLT (1919–1993), Kanaka Maoli, was a poet, short-fiction writer, novelist, publisher, and cultural historian whose collective works contributed to the rise of the second Hawaiian renaissance movement in the 1960s and ’70s. He received several honors and accolades, including recognition as a Living Treasure of Hawai‘i in 1979 and the Hawai‘i Award for Literature in 1985. Additionally, Holt started Topgallant Press (Ku Paʻa Press), which published numerous books by authors in Hawaiʻi.
Give me something from
The towering heights
Of blackened magma
Not a token thing
Something of spirit, mind or flesh, something of bone
The undulating form of
Mauna Loa
Even lacking cold and mists
Or the dark of night, it
Is always forbidding: there is a love
That grows between us.
Ka ‘ili pau, you are a crazed ʻanā-ʻanā
With a shaman’s tangled hair,
Reddened eyes, and his
Laho—maloʻo.
He falls in love with his ʻumeke and its
Death giving objects.
These gifts form the times of confusion
Come from the mountain heights
Wild skies, deep valley cliffs and
Darkened caves
Where soft air creeps into darkness
Gently touching bones and
The old canoe’s prow
Inside the stunning skeletal remains
Of moe puʻu
My companions in death
My own skeleton stretches long
Across a ledge
Above the ancient remains
Of boat and bones
Give me your secrets locked
In lava crust
Give me your muscled power
Melted now to air and dust
Give me your whitened bones
Left to sleep
These many decades now as
The pua of your semen have multiplied down through
The centuries.
Sleep ali‘i nui and your
Companions
Sleep in your magic silence in
Your love wrapped in the total
Embrace of death
You have given us our place
Your seed proliferates
We are here
And we sing and laugh and love
And give your island home
A touch (here and there) of
Love and magic, these
Live in you makua aliʻi sleep on.
In your silence there is strength
Accruing for the kamaliʻi.
NORA MARKS DAUENHAUER (1927–2017), Tlingit, was a poet, fiction writer, and Tlingit language scholar. Born in Juneau, Alaska, to a fisherman and a beader, Dauenhauer researched Tlingit language and translated works of Tlingit culture at the Alaska Native Language Center. She received numerous honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, a Humanist of the Year award, and an American Book Award. She also served as Alaska’s Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014.
(Regional Basketball “All-American Hall of Famer”)
Even your name
proclaims it.
In Tlingit: S’ukkées,
“Wolf Rib, Like a Bracelet,
Like a Hoop.”
Scoring hook shots,
as center,
shooting from the key,
your body motion
forming a hoop
wolfing up the points.
I dance with
dancing cranes
(lilies of the valley),
transplanting them
under a tree until
next summer
when there will be
more dancers.
How to make good baked salmon from the river
for Simon Ortiz
and for all our friends and relatives
who love it
It’s best made in dry-fish camp on a beach by a
fish stream on sticks over an open fire, or during
fishing or during cannery season.
In this case, we’ll make it in the city, baked in
an electric oven on a black fry pan.
INGREDIENTS
Barbecue sticks of alder wood.
In this case the oven will do.
Salmon: River salmon, current super market cost
$4.99 a pound.
In this case, salmon poached from river.
Seal oil or olachen oil.
In this case, butter or Wesson oil, if available.
DIRECTIONS
To butcher, split head up the jaw. Cut through,
remove gills. Split from throat down the belly.
Gut, but make sure you toss all to the seagulls and
the ravens, because they’re your kin, and make sure
you speak to them while you’re feeding them.
Then split down along the back bone and through
the skin. Enjoy how nice it looks when it’s split.
Push stake through flesh and skin like pushing
a needle through cloth, so that it hangs on stakes
while cooking over fire made from alder wood.
Then sit around and watch the slime on the salmon
begin to dry out. Notice how red the flesh is,
and how silvery the skin looks. Watch and listen
to the grease crackle, and smell its delicious
aroma drifting around on a breeze.
Mash some fresh berries to go along for dessert.
Pour seal oil in with a little water. Set aside.
In this case, put the poached salmon in a fry pan.
Smell how good it smells while it’s cooking,
because it’s soooooooo important.
Cut up an onion. Put in a small dish. Notice how
nice this smells too, and how good it will taste.
Cook a pot of rice to go along with salmon. Find
some soy sauce to put on rice, maybe borrow some.
In this case, think about how nice the berries would
have been after the salmon, but open a can of fruit
cocktail instead.
Then go out by the cool stream and get some skunk
cabbage, because it’s biodegradable, to serve the
salmon from. Before you take back the skunk cabbage,
you can make a cup out of one to drink from the
cool stream.
In this case, plastic forks, paper plates and cups will do, and
drink cool water from the faucet.
TO SERVE
After smelling smoke and fish and watching the
cooking, smelling the skunk cabbage and the berries
mixed with seal oil, when the salmon is done, put
salmon on stakes on the skunk cabbage and pour
some seal oil over it and watch the oil run into
the nice cooked flakey flesh which has now turned
pink.
Shoo mosquitoes off the salmon, and shoo the ravens
away, but don’t insult them, because mosquitoes
are known to be the ashes of the cannibal giant,
and Raven is known to take off with just about
anything.
In this case, dish out on paper plates from fry pan.
Serve to all relatives and friends you have invited
to the barbecue and those who love it.
And think how good it is that we have good spirits
that still bring salmon and oil.
TO EAT
Everyone knows that you can eat just about every
part of the salmon, so I don’t have to tell you
that you start from the head, because it’s everyone’s
favorite. You take it apart, bone by bone, but make
sure you don’t miss the eyes, the cheeks, the nose,
and the very best part—the jawbone.
You start on the mandible with a glottalized
alveolar fricative action as expressed in the Tlingit
verb als’oss’.
Chew on the tasty, crispy skins before you start
on the bones. Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! How delicious.
Then you start on the body by sucking on the fins
with the same action. Include the crispy skins, then
the meat with grease dripping all over it.
Have some cool water from the stream with the salmon.
In this case, water from the faucet will do.
Enjoy how the water tastes sweeter with salmon.
When done, toss the bones to the ravens and
seagulls and mosquitoes, but don’t throw them in
the salmon stream because the salmon have spirits
and don’t like to see the remains of their kin
among them in the stream.
In this case, put bones in plastic bag to put
in dumpster.
Now settle back to a story telling session, while
someone feeds the fire.
In this case, small talk and jokes with friends
will do while you drink beer. If you shouldn’t
drink beer, tea or coffee will do nicely.
Gunalchéesh for coming to my barbecue.
LEIALOHA PERKINS (1930–2018), Kanaka Maoli, was a poet, publisher, fiction writer, and educator. She earned her PhD in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1998 she received the Hawai‘i Award for Literature. In addition to writing poetry, Perkins founded Kamalu‘uluolele Publishers, which specialized in Pacific Islands subjects as they relate to both East and West, and taught at universities in Hawaiʻi and Tonga.
Those years of lung-filling dust in Lahaina
of heat and humidity that induced
men and animals to lie down mid-afternoons
and sleep–between the mill’s lunch shift whistles–
were not great, but mediocre for most things
and superlative for doing or not doing anything
useful, ugly, or good. Just for staying out of trouble.
There was time and space for a child to grow up in
playing between scrabbly hibiscus bushes,
and hopping over rutty roads
that smelled of five-day-old urine, all on one side
of the canefield tracks, ground once blanketed
with warrior dead and sorcerer’s bones.
At the shore, the white newcomers lived
crossing themselves at sunrise and sunset
in a paradise “discovered,” jubilating
as Captain Cook who also had found the unfound natives
and their unfound shore naked and ready for instant use.
Mill Camp’s
beginnings are beginnings
one may grow to respect if not honor
because they are a man’s beginnings.
But let’s not make sentiment
the coin for the cheap treatment
some got–and others enjoyed handing out.
Let’s call the fair, fair.
What may have been good, good enough
because it was there,
like space waiting for time to fill it up
(while we were looking elsewhere);
nevertheless, plantation worlds
enjoyed their own tenors:
ghettos of mind, slums of the heart.
VINCE WANNASSAY (1936–2017), Umatilla, was a poet, writer, artist, and community worker. After some years on skid row he began writing and published in many anthologies, including Dancing on the Rim of the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Northwest Native American Writing (1990). He mentored many people in the Native community in the Portland, Oregon, area.
A LONG TIME AGO
WHEN I WAS A KID
I LIVED WITH MY
UNCLE AND AUNT
MY UNCLE RODE WITH
JOSEPH
WHEN HE WAS A KID . . .
I MEAN MY UNCLE NOT JOSEPH
UNCLE USE TO TELL US KIDS
COYOTE STORIES
SOME WERE FUNNY, SOME WEREN’T
MY MOTHER TOOK US, FROM UNCLE & AUNT
SHE PUT US IN A CATHOLIC BOARDING SCHOOL.
AT SCHOOL I TOLD SOME OF THE
COYOTE STORIES.
THE SISTERS SAID “DON’T BELIEVE
THOSE STORIES”. .
BUT BELIEVE US. . . . .
ABOUT A GUY
WHO WAVES A STICK . . . AND THE SEA OPENS
****
WALKS ON WATER
****
WHO DIES AND COMES BACK . . . TO LIFE AGAIN
****
WHO ASCENDS UP INTO THE SKY . . . . . . .
I USED TO BELIEVE ALL THOSE
STORIES
I DON’T ANYMORE.
NOW I WISH. . . . .I COULD
REMEMBER THOSE
COYOTE STORIES. . . . .UNCLE TOLD ME
DUANE NIATUM (1938–), Klallam, is a poet, fiction writer, and editor. After serving in the United States Navy, Niatum earned a PhD from the University of Michigan. Along with his creative works, Niatum served as an editor for Harper & Row’s Native American Authors series. Niatum has been the recipient of many awards and accolades, including the Governor’s Award from the State of Washington, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, and grants from the Carnegie Fund for Authors and PEN.
He awoke this morning from a strange dream—
Thunderbird wept for him in the blizzard.
Holding him in their circle, Nisqually women
Turn to the river, dance to its song.
He burned in the forest like a red cedar,
His arms fanning blue flames toward
The white men claiming the camas valley
For their pigs and fowl.
Musing over wolf’s tracks vanishing in snow,
The memory of his wives and children
Keeps him mute. Flickering in the dawn fires,
His faith grows roots, tricks the soldiers
Like a fawn, sleeping black as the brush.
They laugh at his fate, frozen as a bat
Against his throat. Still, death will take
Him only to his father’s longhouse,
Past the flaming rainbow door. These bars
Hold but his tired body; he will eat little
And speak less before he hangs.
I camp in the light of the fox,
Within the singing mirror of night.
Hunt for courage to return to the voice,
Whirling my failures through the meadow
Where I watch my childhood pick
Choke cherries, the women cook salmon
On the beach, my Grandfather sings his song to deer.
When my heart centers inside the necklace
Of fires surrounding his village of white fir,
Sleeping under seven snowy blankets of changes,
I will leave Raven’s cave.
The years in the blood keep us naked to the bone.
So many hours of darkness we fail to sublimate.
Light breaks down the days to printless stone.
I sing what I sang before, it’s the dream alone.
We fall like the sun when the moon’s our fate.
The years in the blood keep us naked to the bone.
I wouldn’t reach your hand, if I feared the dark alone;
My heart’s a river, but it is not chilled with hate.
Light breaks down the days to printless stone.
We dance from memory because it’s here on loan.
And as the music stops, nothing’s lost but the date.
The years in the blood keep us naked to the bone.
How round the sky, how the planets drink the unknown.
I gently touch; your eyes show it isn’t late.
Light breaks down the days to printless stone.
What figures in this clay; gives a sharper bone?
What turns the spirit white? Wanting to abbreviate?
The years in the blood keep us naked to the bone.
Light breaks down the days to printless stone.
FRED BIGJIM (1941–), Iñupiaq, is a poet who grew up in Nome, Alaska. Earning graduate degrees from Harvard University and the University of Washington, Bigjim has published several collections of poetry, including Sinrock (1983) and Walk the Wind (1988), as well as non-fiction and fiction works. He has also worked as an educator and an educational counselor for Native American youth.
Sometimes I feel you around me,
Primal creeping, misty stillness.
Watching, waiting, dancing.
You scare me.
When I sleep, you visit me
In my dreams,
Wanting me to stay forever.
We laugh and float neatly about.
I saw you once, I think,
At Egavik.
The Eskimos called you a shaman.
I know better, I know you’re
Spirit Moves.
ED EDMO (1946–), Shoshone-Bannock, is a poet, playwright, performer, traditional storyteller, tour guide, and lecturer on Northwest tribal culture. He lectures, holds workshops, and creates dramatic monologues on cultural understanding and awareness, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental health. His poetry collection is These Few Words of Mine (2006).
I sit in your
crowded classrooms
learn how to
read about dick,
jane & spot
but I remember
how to get deer
I remember
how to beadwork
I remember
how to fish
I remember
the stories told
by the old
but spot keeps
showing up &
my report card
is bad
PHILLIP WILLIAM GEORGE (1946–2012), Nez Perce, was a poet, writer, and champion traditional plateau dancer. His poem “Proviso” had been translated into eighteen languages worldwide and won multiple honors, including being performed on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Dick Cavett Show. In addition to his poetry, George also wrote, produced, and narrated Season of Grandmothers for the Public Broadcasting Corporation.
They said, “You are no longer a lad.”
I nodded.
They said, “Enter the council lodge.”
I sat.
They said, “Our lands are at stake.”
I scowled.
They said, “We are at war.”
I hated.
They said, “Prepare red war symbols.”
I painted.
They said, “Count coups.”
I scalped.
They said, “You’ll see friends die.”
I cringed.
They said, “Desperate warriors fight best.”
I charged.
They said, “Some will be wounded.”
I bled.
They said, “To die is glorious.”
They lied.
IMAIKALANI KALAHELE (1946–), Kanaka Maoli, is a poet, artist, and musician. Writing in a combination of English, Pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English), and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, Kalahele seeks to honor ancestral knowledge while challenging colonial injustice. In addition to his poetry and art book Kalahele (2002), his poems have been published in several anthologies, including Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Water and ʻōiwi: a native hawaiian journal, and his art has been exhibited throughout the Pacific. The 2019 Honolulu Bienniale recognized his prolific contributions to art in Hawaiʻi by naming the event “Making Wrong Right Now” after a line from his poem “Manifesto.”
get this old man
he live by my house
he just make rope
every day
you see him making rope
if
he not playing his ukulele
or
picking up his mo‘opuna
he making
rope
and nobody wen ask him
why?
how come?
he always making
rope
morning time . . . making rope
day time . . . making rope
night time . . . making rope
all the time . . . making rope
must get enuf rope
for make Hōkūle‘a already
most time
he no talk
too much
to nobody
he just sit there
making rope
one day
we was partying by
his house
you know
playing music
talking stink
about the other
guys them
I was just
coming out of the bushes
in back the house
and
there he was
under the mango tree
making rope
and he saw me
all shame
I look at him and said
“Aloha Papa”
he just look up
one eye
and said
“Howzit! What? Party?
Alright!”
I had to ask
“E kala mai, Papa
I can ask you one question?”
“How come
everyday you make rope
at the bus stop
you making rope
outside McDonald’s drinking coffee
you making rope.
How come?”
he wen
look up again
you know
only the eyes move kine
putting one more
strand of coconut fiber
on to the kaula
he make one
fast twist
and said
“The Kaula of our people
is 2,000 years old
boy
some time . . . good
some time . . . bad
some time . . . strong
some time . . . sad
but most time
us guys
just like this rope
one by one
strand by strand
we become
the memory of our people
and
we still growing
so
be proud
do good
and
make rope
boy
make rope.”
MICHAEL MCPHERSON (1947–2008), Kanaka Maoli, was a poet, publisher, editor, and lawyer. Interested in cultivating and maintaining a literature that was uniquely Hawaiian, McPherson wrote poetry, founded Xenophobia Press, and published the journal HAPA. In 1988, McPherson received a certificate of merit from the Hawai‘i House of Representatives, acknowledging his work and scholarship on Hawaiian literature. As a lawyer, McPherson worked on Native Hawaiian claims in environmental law and Hawaiian land use.
Clouds, Trees & Ocean, North Kauai
In Hā‘ena’s cerulean sky today
the cirrus clouds converge upon
a point beyond the summer horizon, all
hurtling backward: time
drawn from this world as our
master inhales.
The ironwoods lean down their dark needles
to the beach, long strings of
broken white coral and shells that ebb
to the north and west, and wait
dreaming the bent blue backs of waves.
MAHEALANI PEREZ-WENDT (1947–), Kanaka Maoli, is a poet, writer, and activist. Her poetry was recognized through the University of Hawai‘i’s Elliot Cades Award for Literature in 1993. She is the author of the poetry collection Uluhaimalama (2007) and her poems have been published in numerous anthologies. Perez-Wendt also has an extensive history of community engagement, formerly serving as executive director of Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, serving as the first Native Hawaiian board member of the Native American Rights Fund, and working extensively with prison issues and sovereignty restoration.
We have gathered
With manacled hands;
We have gathered
With shackled feet;
We have gathered
In the dust of forget
Seeking the vein
Which will not collapse.
We have bolted
The gunner’s fence,
Given sacrament
On blood-stained walls.
We have linked souls
End to end
Against the razor’s slice.
We have kissed brothers
In frigid cells,
Pressing our mouths
Against their ice-hard pain.
We have feasted well
On the stones of this land:
We have gathered
In dark places
And put down roots.
We have covered the Earth,
Bold flowers for her crown.
We have climbed
The high wire of treason–
We will not fall.
WAYNE KAUMUALII WESTLAKE (1947–1984), Kanaka Maoli, was born on Maui and raised on the island of O‘ahu. With Richard Hamasaki, he created and edited the literary journal Seaweeds & Constructions from 1976 to 1983. His posthumous collection, Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947–1984), edited by Mei-Li M. Siy and Richard Hamasaki (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), includes nearly 200 poems, many previously unpublished.
DANA NAONE HALL (1949–), Kanaka Maoli, founded Hui Alanui o Mākena, an organization that successfully prevented the destruction of the Piʻilani Trail, a part of the road that once encircled Maui built by the aliʻi nui Piʻilani in the sixteenth century; and she has been at the forefront to protect iwi kupuna (ancestral remains) at Honokahua and other sacred burial sites. In addition, she is the editor of Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Water (1985). Her book Life of the Land: Articulations of a Native Writer (2017), a collection of poetry and memoir focused on her activism, won an American Book Award in 2019.
for Leahi
The way it is now
few streams still flow
through lo‘i kalo
to the sea.
Most of the water
where we live
runs in ditches alongside
the graves of Chinese bones
where the same crop has burned in the fields
for the last one hundred years.
On another island,
a friend whose father
was born in a pili grass
hale in Kahakuloa,
bought a house on a concrete
pad in Hawai‘i Kai.
For two hundred thousand
he got window frames
out of joint and towel racks
hung crooked on the walls.
He’s one of the lucky ones.
People are sleeping in cars
or rolled up in mats on beaches,
while the lū‘au show hostess
invites the roomful of visitors
to step back in time
to when gods and goddesses
walked the earth.
I wonder what she’s
talking about.
All night, Kānehekili
flashes in the sky
and Moanonuikalehua changes
from a beautiful woman
into a lehua tree
at the sound of the pahu.
It’s true that the man
who swam with the sharks
and kept them away
from the nets full of fish
by feeding them limu kala
is gone,
but we’re still here
like the fragrant white koki‘o
blooming on the long branch
like the hairy leafed nehe
clinging to the dry pu‘u
like the moon high over Ha‘ikū
lighting the way home.
ANDREW HOPE III (1949–2008), Tlingit, was a poet and a Tlingit political activist. Born in Sitka, Alaska, Hope was the cofounder of the Tlingit Clan Conference as well as Tlingit Readers, a nonprofit publishing house. He married Iñupiaq poet Elizabeth “Sister Goodwin” Hope. Inspired by the work of Tlingit poet Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Hope used his poetry to help the Tlingit language remain alive in written form.
They sing Onward Christian Soldiers
Down at the ANB Hall
Every year in convention
The kids don’t like that song
They don’t like missionary history
We shove that in the closet nowadays
The church had little to do with
ANB adopting this battle song
William Paul, Sr. introduced it
after he heard it at Lodge 163 of A.F. and A.M.
Portland, Oregon
The Masonic Lodge influence
The song bothers me
That’s no secret
But
My people went into the church to survive
I don’t know what the pioneer days were like
Up here in gold rush Alaska
I listen to the Black church and think about the
music of the Black spirit
the gospel of Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers
Otis Redding and the others
That spirit catches you
When you walk into the meeting and feel like family
You’ll know what I’m saying
HAUNANI-KAY TRASK (1949–), Kanaka Maoli, is a prolific poet, scholar, and political activist and a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She is the author of two scholarly monographs, Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory (1984) and From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi (1993), a foundational text in Hawaiian and Indigenous studies, and has written many influential essays. She has two poetry books, Light in the Crevice Never Seen (1999) and Night Is a Sharkskin Drum (2002). She is a professor emeritus of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she cofounded the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies.
there is always this sense:
a wash of earth
rain, palm light falling
across ironwood
sands, fine and blowing
to an ancient sea
i hear them always:
with fish hooks and nets
dark, long
red canoes
gliding thoughtlessly
to sea
and the still lush hills
of laughter
buried in secret
caves, bones of love
and ritual, and sacred
life
a place for the manō
the pueo, the ‘ōʻō
for the smooth flat pōhaku
for a calabash of stars
flung over the Pacific
and yet
our love suffers
with a heritage
of beauty
in a land of tears
where our people
go blindly
servants of another
race, a culture of machines
grinding vision
from the eye, thought
from the hand
until a tight silence
descends
wildly in place
Night is a sharkskin drum
sounding our bodies black
and gold.
All is aflame
the uplands a shush
of wind.
From Halema‘uma‘u
our fiery Akua comes:
E Pele ē,
E Pele ē,
E Pele ē.
I ride those ridge backs
down each narrow
cliff red hills
and birdsong in my
head gold dust
on my face nothing
whispers but the trees
mountains blue beyond
my sight pools of
icy water at my feet
this earth glows the color
of my skin sunburnt
natives didn’t fly
from far away
but sprouted whole through
velvet taro in the sweet mud
of this ‘āina
their ancient name
is kept my piko
safely sleeps
famous rains
flood down
in tears
I know these hills
my lovers chant them
late at night
owls swoop
to touch me:
‘aumākua
EARLE THOMPSON (1950–2006), Yakima, was born in Nespelem, Washington. His creative works have won writing competitions, such as the one held at Seattle’s annual Bumbershoot festival, and they have been included in various publications, including Blue Cloud Quarterly.
My grandfather placed wood
in the pot-bellied stove
and sat; he spoke:
“One time your uncle and me
seen some stick-indians
driving in the mountains
they moved alongside
the car and watched us
look at them
they had long black hair
down their backs and were naked
they ran past us.”
Grandfather shifted
his weight in the chair.
He explained,
“Stick-indians are powerful people
they come out during the fall.
They will trick little children
who don’t listen
into the woods
and can imitate anything
so you should learn
about them.”
Grandfather poured himself
some coffee and continued:
“At night you should put tobacco
out for them
and whatever food you got
just give them some
’cause stick-indians
can be vengeful
for people making fun of them.
They can walk through walls
and will stick a salmon up your ass
for laughing at them
this will not happen if you understand
and respect them.”
My cousin giggled. I listened and remember
Grandfather slowly sipped his coffee
and smiled at us.
The fire smoldered like a volcano
and crackled.
We finally went to bed. I dreamt
of the mountains and now
I understand my childhood.
DIAN MILLION (1950–), Tanana Athabascan, received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Million’s Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights focuses on the politics of mental and physical health, with attention to how it informs race, class, and gender in Indian Country. She teaches American Indian Studies at the University of Washington.
Minnie had a house
which had trees in the yard
and lots of flowers
she especially liked the kitchen
because it had a large old cast iron stove
and that
the landlord said
was the reason
the house was so cheap.
Pretty soon Minnie’s brother Rupert came along
and his wife Onna
and they set up housekeeping in the living room
on the fold-out couch,
so the house warmed and rocked
and sang because Minnie and Rupert laughed a lot.
Pretty soon their mom Elsie came to live with them too
because she liked being with the laughing young people
and she knew how the stove worked the best.
Minnie gave up her bed and slept on a cot.
Well pretty soon
Dar and Shar their cousins came to town looking for work.
They were twins
the pride of Elsie’s sister Jo
and boy could those girls sing. They pitched a tent under
the cedar patch in the yard
and could be heard singing around the house
mixtures of old Indian tunes and country western.
When it was winter
Elsie worried
about her mother Sarah
who was still living by herself in Moose Glen back home.
Elsie went in the car with Dar and Shar and Minnie and Rupert and got her.
They all missed her anyway and her funny stories.
She didn’t have any teeth
so she dipped all chewable items in grease
which is how they’re tasty she said.
She sat in a chair in front of the stove usually
or would cook up a big pot of something for the others.
By and by Rupert and Onna had a baby who they named Lester,
or nicknamed Bumper, and they were glad that Elsie and Sarah
were there to help.
One night the landlord came by
to fix the leak in the bathroom pipe
and was surprised to find Minnie, Rupert and Onna, Sarah and Elsie, Shar and Dar
all singing around the drum next to the big stove in the kitchen
and even a baby named Lester who smiled waving a big greasy piece of dried fish.
He was disturbed
he went to court to evict them
he said the house was designed for single-family occupancy
which surprised the family
because that’s what they thought they were.
GLORIA BIRD (1951–), Spokane, is a poet and a scholar whose honors include the Diane Decorah Memorial Poetry Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Her work frequently discusses and works against the harmful representations and stereotypes of Native peoples. As one of the central figures of Northwest Native poetry, Bird taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and was a cofounder of the Northwest Native American Writers’ Association.
The one-room adobe skeleton sat on a hill overlooking a field that would not grow anything but adobe brick. We packed holes around the vigas in winter, built a fire to “sweat” the walls insulating us for moving in.
Sr. Lujan sold the land as dried and Mexican as he, would sell what lay on the land: the rusted equipment of his father, the cellar dug into the dirt, and the bridge we crossed to reach the land he’s sold.
His fat lawyer spoke with hands as coarse and brown as burnt fish asking for the price of the bridge belonging to Sr. Lujan, one hundred dollars to not be bothered any longer, Sr. Lujan whispering, “es verdad” next to him.
In Chimayo a crucifix is planted higher up on a ridge watching over what sacrifices were made of Chimayo all year. From my knees, I watched brighter stars journey the path of sky the cross did not fill through the night of my labor, rocking for comfort not found through an open window.
Early morning I lay on the floor to give birth, a veil of rain falling. Hina-tee-yea is what he called it in his elemental language. Four days later, named our daughter also, fine rain, child of the desert mesas, yucca, and chamisal.
Across the arroyo, the news would remind Manuelita of her grief, y su hijito lost the month we moved in. That spring, centipedes sprinkled sand from the warming vigas where they were hidden.
Your absence has left me only fragments of a summer’s run
on a night like this, fanning in August heat, a seaweeded song.
Sweat glistens on my skin, wears me translucent, sharp as scales.
The sun wallowing its giant roe beats my eyes back red and dry.
Have you seen it above the highway ruling you like planets?
Behind you, evening is Columbian, slips dark arms
around the knot of distance that means nothing
to salmon or slim desiring. Sweet man of rivers,
the blood of fishermen and women will drive you back again,
appointed places set in motion like seasons. We are like salmon
swimming against the mutation of current to find
our heartbroken way home again, weight of red eggs and need.
ELIZABETH “SISTER GOODWIN” HOPE (1951–1997), Iñupiaq, served on the Institute of Alaska Native Arts board and was a member of the Native American Writers’ Circle of Alaska. She was married to Tlingit poet Andrew Hope III. She published a book of poems called A Lagoon Is in My Backyard in 1984.
when popcorn
first came up north
north to Kotzebue sound
little iñuit
took it home from school
long long ago when
the new century first woke up
Aana sat on neat
rows of willow branches
braiding sinew into thread
Uva Aana niggin
una piksinñaq
for you grandmother
eat this
it is something that bounces
after Aana ate it
the little iñuit girls
giggled hysterically
for sure now, they said
old Aana is going to bounce too
for hours
Aana sat hunched over
with her eyes squinched shut
she grasped onto neat rows
of willow branches
waiting for the popcorn
to make her bounce around
DAN TAULAPAPA MCMULLIN (1953–), Samoan (Amerika Sāmoa), a faʻafafine poet, visual artist, and filmmaker, was raised on Tutuila Island in the villages of Maleola and Leone. He has garnered national acclaim, receiving awards like the Poets & Writers Award from the Writers Loft and earning a spot on the American Library Association Rainbow Top Ten List. Along with his poetry, his visual artwork has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute, and the United Nations.
There was a ship
went into the sea
over the body of my brother
I am just a boy
he was not much older than me
the goddess is good and cruel
wants her share of life, like us
sparkling dust of birds far away whom we follow, the stars
the blood red dust of life
as my brother’s face
disappeared beneath us
beneath the ship which carried us and the goddess
to where we do not know
leaving the war of my grandfather
the smell of smoke following us
our keel, my brother, knocking down the doors of the sea
the tall, and the wild waves coming, crashing
under the keel of my brother’s name
far from the sound of places we were leaving
the roads we followed
marching past my uncle’s crooked mountain forts
while his men called out at us
with our long hair
on our shoulders
first by my brother’s name
who was this girl with him, leave her with us
she is my brother, he said
not glancing at me
our songs we sang in the warm rain for the goddess
blessed be her name
her cloak the wild wood pigeons turning
her crown the lone plover’s crying
where now are you brother?
JOE BALAZ (1953–), Kanaka Maoli, is a poet in both American English and Pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English) and an editor. Invested in preserving Hawaiian oral traditions as well as Pidgin writing, Balaz wrote After the Drought (1985), and OLA (1996), a collection of visual poetry; edited Hoʻomānoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (1989); and recorded an album of Pidgin poetry, Electric Laulau (1998). In 2019 he published Pidgin Eye, a collection of poems written over the previous thirty years.
Charlene
wun wahine wit wun glass eye
studied da bottom
of wun wooden poi bowl
placed in wun bathtub
to float just like wun boat.
Wun mysterious periscope
rising from wun giant menacing fish
appeared upon da scene.
Undahneath da surface
deeper den wun sigh
its huge body
lingered dangerously near da drain.
Wun torpedo laden scream
exploded in da depths
induced by Charlene
who wuz chanting
to da electric moon
stuck up on da ceiling.
Silver scales
wobbled like drunken sailors
and fell into da blue.
No can allow
to move da trip lever on da plunger
no can empty da ocean
no can reveal da dry porcelain ring
to someday be scrubbed clean.
Charlene
looked at all da ancestral lines
ingrained on da bottom of da round canoe
floating on da watah
and she saw her past and future.
Wun curious ear wuz listening
through wun empty glass
placed against da wall
and discovered
dat old songs wuz still being sung
echoing like sonar
off of da telling tiles.
DIANE L’X EIS´ BENSON (1954–), Tlingit, is a poet, performing artist, speaker, and scholar. Utilizing poetry, Benson performed her one-woman shows nationally and internationally, most notably, “Mother America Blues” and “My Spirit Raised its Hands.” Her work addressing violence and injustice issues through performance art, speaking, and teaching earned her community service awards, as well as a Bonnie Heavy Runner Victim Advocacy Award, a Goldie Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize in poetry and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Benson serves as faculty for the Department of Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
For those whose
children were taken from them
My aunt gives me
a picture of my mother
A woman
Whose voice
drifted waterlogged
onto a California
beach
And cried silent
Sleek,
We sneak just so,
past the tall blades of grass
across the flats of Minto
Canoe glides with no sound
our paddles dipping water like
ancient spirits in dance
Ducks abundant
we’ll take plenty to the
village, but mother earth
urges play and off come our shirts
young man’s long hair flying
paddle high, woman’s long hair
laying, teasing the open sky
Heading on with
potlatch ducks to the village edge,
I can hardly breathe,
as if the ancient ones
are watching, and are about to
sneeze
Uncle sharpened his harpoon for
fishing. It felt like war. Her pain
was heard in her movement. Listen.
Listen, she is hanging clothes in the
rain. Listen. I think he will come
back from fishing. But her son never does.
And uncle sharpens his harpoon. But
he’s gone fishing. A debt will be paid
today you see. A debt will be paid.
An eye for an eye. That is the way
he sees it.
I wait until sunset. By the attic.
Top of the stairs. I wait. For tomorrow
comes needling light at blades of grass begging
to feel freedom’s scarred feet.
ROBERT DAVIS HOFFMAN (1955–), Tlingit, is a poet, carver, and multi-media artist. Davis considers himself a neo-traditionalist Tlingit artist and storyteller, working in both non-traditional and traditional modes. His collection of poetry, Soul Catcher, was published in 1986.
At the Door of the Native Studies Director
In this place years ago
they educated old language out of you,
put you in line, in uniform, on your own two feet.
They pointed you in the right direction but
still you squint at that other place,
that country hidden within a country.
You chase bear, deer. You hunt seal. You fish.
This is what you know. This is how you move,
leaving only a trace of yourself.
Each time you come back
you have no way to tell about this.
Years later you meet their qualifications–
native scholar.
They give you a job, a corner office.
Now you’re instructed to remember
old language, bring back faded legend,
anything that’s left.
They keep looking in on you, sideways.
You don’t fit here, you no longer fit there.
You got sick. They still talk of it,
the cheap wine on your breath
as you utter in restless sleep
what I sketch at your bedside.
Tonight, father, I wrap you in a different blanket,
the dances come easier, I carve them for you.
This way you move through me.
ELIZABETH WOODY (1959–), Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, a poet and an illustrator, was born in Ganado, Arizona. After attending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, she received her BA from Evergreen State College and her master’s in public administration from Portland State University. She is the recipient of several awards and accolades; her first book of poetry, Hand into Stone, received the American Book Award, and she was named the Poet Laureate of Oregon for 2016–18.
for Margaret Jim-Pennah and Gladys McDonald
Weaving baskets you twine the strands into four parts.
Then, another four. The four directions many times.
Pairs of fibers spiral around smaller and smaller sets of threads.
Then, one each time. Spirals hold all this design
airtight and pure. This is our house, over and over.
Our little sisters, Khoush, Sowitk, Piaxi, Wakamu,
the roots will rest inside.
We will be together in this basket.
We will be together in this life.
31/32 Warm Springs–Wasco–Yakama–Pit River–Navajo
1/32 Other Tribal Roll number 1553
THIRTY-SECOND PARTS OF A HUMAN BEING
SUN MOON EVENING STAR AT DAWN CLOUDS RAINBOW CEDAR
LANGUAGE COLORS AND SACRIFICE LOVE THE GREAT FLOOD
THE TORTOISE CARRIES THE PARROT HUMMINGBIRD TRILLIUM
THE CROW RAVEN COYOTE THE CONDOR JAGUAR GRIZZLY
TIMBER WOLF SIDEWINDER THE BAT CORN TOBACCO SAGE
MUSIC DEATH CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SPIDERWEB
RESURRECTED PROPHETS
RECURRENT POWER OF CREATION IS FUELED BY SONG
Like the lava, we have always been indomitable in flowing
purposes. A perpetuity of Ne-shy-Chus means we are rooted
in ancestral domain and are Free, with any other power
reserved in the truce of treaty, 1855, or any other time.
We kept peace. Preserved and existed through our Songs,
Dances, Longhouses, and the noninterruption of giving Thanks
and observances of the Natural laws of Creating by the Land
itself. The Nusoox are as inseparable from the flow of these
cycles. Our Sovereignty is permeated, in its possession
of our individual rights, by acknowledgment of good
for the whole
and this includes the freedom of the Creator in these teachings
given to and practiced by The People. We are watched over
by the mountains, not Man, not Monarchy,
or any other manifestations
of intimidation by misguided delusions of supremacy
over the Land or beings animate or inanimate.
SHERMAN ALEXIE (1966–), Spokane, is an award-winning and nationally recognized poet, novelist, and short-story writer, whose honors include an American Book Award, the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Alexie founded Longhouse Media, a nonprofit organization that teaches Native American youth how to use media for cultural expression and social change.
The spiders appeared suddenly
after that summer rainstorm.
Some people still insist the spiders fell with the rain
while others believe the spiders grew from the damp soil like weeds with eight thin roots.
The elders knew the spiders
carried stories in their stomachs.
We tucked our pants into our boots when we walked through the fields of fallow stories.
An Indian girl opened the closet door and a story fell into her hair.
We lived in the shadow of a story trapped in the ceiling lamp.
The husk of a story museumed on the windowsill.
Before sleep we shook our blankets and stories fell to the floor.
A story floated in a glass of water left on the kitchen table.
We opened doors slowly and listened for stories.
The stories rose on hind legs and offered their red bellies to the most beautiful Indians.
Stories in our cereal boxes.
Stories in our firewood.
Stories in the pockets of our coats.
We captured stories and offered them to the ants, who carried the stories back to their queen.
A dozen stories per acre.
We poisoned the stories and gathered their remains with broom and pan.
The spiders disappeared suddenly
after that summer lightning storm.
Some people will insist the spiders were burned to ash
while others believe the spiders climbed the lightning bolts and became a new constellation.
The elders knew the spiders
had left behind bundles of stories.
Up in the corners of our old houses
we still find those small, white bundles
and nothing, neither fire
nor water, neither rock nor wind,
can bring them down.
The Powwow at the End of the World
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.
DG NANOUK OKPIK (1968–), Iñupiaq, was born in Anchorage, and her family is from Barrow, Alaska. She earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and her poetry has been widely acclaimed, with Corpse Whale (2012) winning an American Book Award. She was the recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Scholarship, is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts, and lives in Santa Fe.
The Fate of Inupiaq-like Kingfisher
But no one can
stop
a bird spear set
in motion,
made of notched bone,
feathered arrows pinnate
around the shaft,
with hair fringe
as it strikes
piercing depilated skin.
Some humans weave themselves
with lime grass,
into large orbs.
Others make goosefeet baskets
of seaweed or with narrow leaves,
or collect matches or tobacco.
The lamp soot burns like gas.
On Clovis point a circular icy reef,
my existence becoming a flicker
like the orange scales of a kingfisher.
We pirouette, diving, diving,
deep.
Look at my/her engraved chin made by deep lines of soot-ink.
See the grove across her/my face.
A bull caribou tramples my shoulders, pins
her/me to the roof rock, tethers my backstrap. Boxed in ice
cellars, bowhead meat ferments, freezes
to jam.
A shotgun blasts the sky to alert the plywood shacks
of migrating bowheads. The CB voice alerts: “AAAIIGGIAARR”
the house pits and Quonset huts which line the shore of ice laden waters, gray dorsal fins
rise on the Beaufort Sea. A chore-girl in rags, she/I sit/s lotus-legged, weaving baleen
baskets.
Here, brother watches and waits for
the correct time to strike,
right above the blow hole.
Here, it is clean kill. Blood water all around us.
Here, a woman far away crying for the whale’s soul.
But, the men still heave to the beach
another day and a half. Pulling, winching,
pulling, dragging.
She/I cut/s opaque flesh and black meat with a jagged ulu,
carve muktuk, tie dark and white ribbons on each
gunnysack to mark the body parts. She/I slice/s the dorsal fin, give it to my brother
for ceremony, barter a bag of whalebones for fuel to heat the aged and chilled cement
barracks.
On Birnirk for thousands
of years called Point Barrow.
Now here, a duck site a place of trade, where a DEW line
crosses
an old military port of call for sighting air attacks,
where they want
to claim the sea for roads. She’s/I’ve watched the currents,
migrations, felt the rough movements
of the ice, which brings feasts, and famine.
CHRISTY PASSION (1974–), Kanaka Maoli, is a poet and a critical-care nurse. Passion has been the recipient of several literary awards, including Hawai‘i Pacific University’s James A. Vaughn Award for Poetry, the Atlanta Review International Merit Award, the Academy of American Poets Award, and the Eliot Cades Award for Literature. In addition, her collection of poetry, Still Out of Place (2016), earned the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Honorable Mention for Excellence in Literature.
A recording of her voice, an old woman’s voice
full of gravel and lead steeped through
the car radio. She spoke of gathering limu
visitors on ships, and dusty roads in Wai‘anae.
In the distance you could almost hear
the dogs crying, the mullet wriggling in the fish bag.
Nostalgic for a tūtū I never knew,
I feel the ocean pulse inside me
waves rolling over, pushing me till I leap
from this car through the congested H-1
across the noise and ashen sky
emerge beneath the rains in Nu‘uanu.
I move past the fresh water ponds
past the guava trees towards homes
with flimsy tin roofs where
my father, already late for school,
races up Papakōlea with a kite made
of fishing twine. Framed in a small kitchen
window, tūtū scrapes the meat from awa skin
for dinner tonight, wipes her hands on
old flour bags for dish cloths.
She is already small and wants to forget
I may be too late–
I have tomatoes and onion from the market, tūtū,
my hand is out, my plate is empty
and some bones for the dogs to stop their crying
do you know my name?
I am listening for your stories to call me in
my hand is out, my plate is empty
for your stories to show me the way
tūtū, do you know my name?
BRANDY NĀLANI MCDOUGALL (1976–), Kanaka Maoli, is a poet, scholar, editor, and publisher from Kula, Maui. She is an associate professor specializing in Indigenous studies in the American Studies department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is the author of The Salt-Wind: Ka Makani Pa‘akai (2008), a poetry collection, and the scholarly monograph Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (2016), which won the 2017 Beatrice Medicine Award for Scholarship in American Indian Studies. She is the editor of several anthologies and, with Craig Santos Perez, cofounded Ala Press, which publishes Indigenous Pacific literature.
I’m so tired of pretending
each gesture is meaningless,
that the clattering of niu leaves
and the guttural call of birds
overhead say nothing.
There are reasons why
the lichen and moss kākau
the niu’s bark, why
this tree has worn
an ahu of ua and lā
since birth. Scars were carved
into its trunk to record
the mo‘olelo of its being
by the passage of insects
becoming one to move
the earth, speck by speck.
Try to tell them to let go
of the niu rings marking
each passing year, to abandon
their only home and move on.
I can’t pretend there is
no memory held
in the dried coconut hat,
the star ornament, the midribs
bent and dangling away
from their roots, no thought
behind the kāwelewele
that continues to hold us
steady. There was a time
before they were bent
under their need to make
an honest living, when
each frond was bound
by its life to another
like a long, erect fin
skimming the surface
of a sea of grass and sand.
Eventually, it knew it would rise
higher, its flower would emerge
gold, then darken in the sun,
that its fruit would fall, only
to ripen before its brown fronds
bent naturally under the weight
of such memory, back toward
the trunk to drop to the sand,
back to its beginnings, again.
Let this be enough to feed us,
to remember: ka wailewa
i loko, that our own bodies
are buoyant when they bend
and fall, and that the ocean
shall carry us and weave us
back into the sand’s fabric,
that the mo‘opuna taste our sweet.
O ke alelo ka hoe uli o ka ʻōlelo a ka waha.
The tongue is the steering paddle of the words uttered by the mouth.
—‘Ōlelo Noʻeau
‘ekahi
Think of all the lost words, still unspoken,
waiting to be given use, again, claimed,
or for newly born words to unburden
them of their meanings. There are winds and rains
who have lost their names, descending the slopes
of every mountain, each lush valley’s mouth,
and the songs of birds and mo‘o, that cope
with our years of slow unknowing, somehow.
It was not long ago that ‘ōlelo
was silenced, along with its dying race,
who lived, then thrived, reverting to the old
knowing words. English could never replace
the land’s unfolding song, nor the ocean’s
ancient oli, giving us use again.
‘elua
Like the sea urchin leaves, pimpling its shell
as its many spines let go, turn to sand,
my great-grandfather’s Hawaiian words fell
silent, while his children grew, their skin tanned
and too thin to withstand the teacher’s stick,
reprimands demanding English only.
The ban lasted until 1986,
after three generations of family
swallowed our ‘ōlelo like pōhaku,
learned to live with the cold, dark fruit under
our tongues. This is our legacy—words strewn
among wana spines in the long record
the sand has kept within its grains, closer
to reclaiming our shells, now grown thicker.
‘ekolu
Ka ‘Ōlelo has a lilting rhythm
arising from the coastal mountains’ moans
as they loosen their salted earth, succumb
to the ocean and its hunger for stone.
It carries the cadence of nā waihī,
born from the fresh rain in nā waipuna
and flowing past the fruiting ‘ulu trees,
wiliwili, kukui, and koa.
It holds the song my grandfather longs for
most, as he remembers his father’s voice,
and regrets not asking him to speak more
Hawaiian, so that he may have the choice
to offer words in his inheritance,
knowing his ‘ohā will not be silenced.
‘ehā
Think of all the old words that have succumbed,
their kaona thrown oceanward for English
words we use like nets to catch the full sum
of our being, finding too little fish
caught in the mesh, even as we adjust
the gauge, reshaping them to suit our mouths.
I must admit I love the brittle crust
my clumsy tongue’s foreignness forms; it crowns
the dark, churning pith of prenatal earth
rising in the volcano’s throat, unspoken
for now, founding my wide island of words.
And kaona, a ho’okele’s current,
circles during my wa‘a’s slow turn inward,
steering my tongue through each old word learned.
‘elima
As the ‘ape shoot, whose delicate shoots
shoot forth their young sprouts, and spread, and bring forth
in their birth, many branches find their roots
in the dark, wet ‘ōlelo the earth bore.
My unripe tongue taps my palate, my teeth,
like a blind ko‘e that must feel its way
through the liquids, mutes and aspirates of speech,
the threading of breath and blood into lei:
“E aloha. ‘O wai kou inoa?”
I ask, after the language CD’s voice.
“ ‘O Kekauoha ko‘u inoa,”
my grandfather answers, “Pehea ‘oe?”
So, we slowly begin, with what ‘ōlelo
we know; E ho‘oulu ana kākou.
JOAN KANE (1977–), Iñupiaq, was born in Anchorage, Alaska. She attended Harvard University and earned her MFA from Columbia University. Kane’s accolades and honors include the 2014 Indigenous Writer in Residence fellowship at the School for Advanced Research, judge for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize, recipient of the 2018 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, along with fellowships and residences from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Alaska State Council on the Arts.
I have played with the skulls of seals
And feigned them to be children.
I will tell you of the black spot
Constantly before me–
I had tried hard to make land,
But the coast has altogether vanished.
I ask that you keep your eyes shut
Until the sound of the swarm
Above has passed, that you mind not
A certain brightness. After all,
I have whittled you into life-size–
I will divide you into many men
With time for me to gather
The bones of all sorts of animals
And stir life into them.
(people related through common possession of territory)
The enemy misled that missed the island in the fog,
I believe in one or the other, but both exist now
to confuse me. Dark from dark.
Snow from snow. I believe in one—
Craggy boundary, knife blade at the throat’s slight swell.
From time to time the sound of voices
as through sun-singed grass,
or grasses that we used to insulate the walls of our winter houses—
walrus hides lashed together with rawhide cords.
So warm within the willows ingathered forced into leaf.
I am named for your sister Naviyuk: call me apoŋ.
Surely there are ghosts here, my children sprung
from these deeper furrows.
The sky of my mind against which self-
betrayal in its sudden burn
fails to describe the world.
We, who denied the landscape
and saw the light of it.
Leaning against the stone wall ragged
I began to accept my past and, as I accepted it,
I felt, and I didn’t understand:
I am bound to everyone.
LEHUA M. TAITANO (1978–), CHamoru, born in Guåhan, is a queer poet, fiction writer, and cofounder of Art 25. Her chapbook appalachiapacific won the 2010 Merriam-Frontier Award for short fiction. She is also the author of two poetry collections, A Bell Made of Stones (2013) and Inside Me an Island (2018).
Hi Everyone. Maria Flores to Shelton Family, 1982.
Hi everyone
I hope you are all fine
as for us we are
just fine
you ought to know how
I fill of writing
I’m not that good so please
excuse me I just make
this cookies for my girl
to remember the old lady
I think the baby can’t
try it I have a gift and
her m___ one m_____
and I’ve other for Leah
and the shoes for Lehua
and the blouse I’ve buy
lady the mama is just
are 500 the blouse is 6 or
I hope you all like it
please write to me if you
recived it did you recived
the one that Lanie mail it
I ask Lanie and she said
she just mail it the other
day I want to thank you
for the meat
it really good
Mary give me a ring
but it fit on my small
finger please
don’t tell her
that I’m giving you something
tell Mary if she want me
to come I’m ready
just
send my ticket
CEDAR SIGO (1978–), Suquamish. His published works include Stranger in Town (2010), Language Arts (2014), and Royals (2017). Raised on the Suquamish Reservation near Seattle, Washington, Sigo later studied at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He is the editor of Joanne Kyger’s There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera (2017).
Your portraits are all thin indians
Half their faces edging out the fog
Where sparks rain onto our temple, where I enter
to write the names of my poems for the night, Daybreak Star
and The Sun, both of which
I never got around to
For want of love and allegiance in every second, my regrets
you interrupted. Offset in the kind light as a crown.
(Evan’s walking around sounds behind a closed door)
Nice to see you, to walk a bit and stop, as on a river,
its lava shut under in a tunnel of love, regardless
the visions hike up overnight and flames trail off like
the finest spider’s thread slipping my mind.
All my rooms are alien
Towers of books tilt & crumble
at the least extended breath
A matinee beyond recall
Brown birds pale breasted darting through
Too Late Hello Later
Kiss the lights and they change
out over the Stardust
Cities are huge machines for sorting poets
Skating down the cellophane-enfolded hills
Even cast off lines have their own pull and rhyme
Man at leisure ripped out of my mind
Lonesome after mine own kind
Hot black—soft white—warm reds
Mine a thinking man’s cartoon western
Mine the one who enters the stories
Mine the evergreen tears brushed with coral
The boat in the box is mine and mine the full sky
CATHY TAGNAK REXFORD (1978–), Iñupiaq, is a poet and playwright. The author of A Crane Story (2013), illustrated by Sini Salminen, she has received fellowships from the First Peoples House of Learning and the Rasmuson Foundation. Her play Whale Song premiered at Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska in 2019.
No daylight for two months, an ice chisel slivers
frozen lake water refracting blue cinders.
By light of an oil lamp, a child learns to savor marrow:
cracked caribou bones a heap on the floor.
A sinew, thickly wrapped in soot, threads through
the meat on her chin: a tattoo in three slender lines.
One white ptarmigan plume fastened to the lip of
a birch wood basket; thaw approaches: the plume turns brown.
On the edge of the open lead, a toggle-head harpoon
waits to launch: bowhead sings to krill.
Thickened pack ice cracking; a baleen fishing line
pulls taut a silver dorsal fin of a round white fish.
A slate-blade knife slices along the grain of a caribou
hindquarter; the ice cellar lined in willow branches is empty.
Saltwater suffuses into a flint quarry, offshore
a thin layer of radiation glazes leathered walrus skin.
Alongside shatters of a hummock, a marsh marigold
flattens under three black toes of a sandhill crane.
A translucent sheep horn dipper skims a freshwater stream;
underneath, arctic char lay eggs of mercury.
Picked before the fall migration, cloudberries
drench in whale oil, ferment in a sealskin poke.
A tundra swan nests inside a rusted steel drum;
she abandons her newborns hatched a deep crimson.
DONOVAN KŪHIOŌ COLLEPS (1978–), Kanaka Maoli, was born in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, and was raised on the ‘Ewa plains of O‘ahu. A PhD candidate in English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, he is also a production editor at the University of Hawaiʻi Press.
For my grandmother
I am water, only because you are the ocean.
We are here, only
because old leaves have been falling.
A mulching of memories folding
into buried hands.
The cliffs we learn to edge.
The tree trunk hollowed, humming.
I am a tongue, only because
you are the body planting stories with thumb.
Soil crumbs cling to your knees.
Small stacks of empty clay pots dreaming.
I am an air plant suspended, only
because you are the trunk I cling to.
I am the milky fish eye, only
because it’s your favorite.
Even the sound you make
when your lips kiss the opelu
socket is a mo‘olelo.
A slipper is lost in the yard.
A haku lei is chilling in the icebox.
I am a cup for feathers, only
because you want to fill the hours.
I am a turning wrist, only
because you left the hose on.
Heliconias are singing underwater.
Beetles are floating across the yard.
CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ (1980–), CHamoru, is a poet, scholar, educator, editor, and publisher who has won several awards and honors for the four books of poetry in his series from unincorporated territory, including the PEN America Literary Award for Poetry (2011), an American Book Award (2015), a Lannan Literary Award (2016), and the Elliot Cades Award for Literature (2017). He cofounded, with Brandy Nālani McDougall, Ala Press, a publishing company that specializes in Indigenous Pacific literature. He is an associate professor of creative writing in the English department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
GINEN THE MICRONESIAN KINGFISHER [I SIHEK]
[our] nightmare : no
birdsong—
the jungle was riven emptied
of [i sihek] bright blue green turquoise red gold
feathers—everywhere : brown
tree snakes avian
silence—
the snakes entered
without words when [we] saw them it was too late—
they were at [our] doors sliding along
the passages of [i sihek]
empire—then
the zookeepers came—
called it species survival plan—captured [i sihek] and transferred
the last
twenty-nine micronesian kingfishers
to zoos for captive breeding [1988]—they repeated [i sihek]
and repeated :
“if it weren’t for us
your birds [i sihek]
would be gone
forever”
what does not change /
last wild seen—
ISHMAEL HOPE (1981–), Tlingit and Iñupiaq, grew up surrounded by both Tlingit and Iñupiaq cultures. He is the son of poets Andrew Hope III and Elizabeth “Sister Goodwin” Hope. In conjunction with his poetry, Hope has coordinated festivals, performed as an actor, and been a lead writer for the video game Never Alone (Kisima Innitchuna), which visualizes traditional Iñupiaq lore.
Canoe Launching into the Gaslit Sea
Now, as much as ever, and as always,
we need to band together, form
a lost tribe, scatter as one, burst
through rifle barrels guided
by the spider’s crosshairs. We need
to knit wool sweaters for our brother
sleeping under the freeway,
hand him our wallets and bathe
his feet in holy water. We need
to find our lost sister, last seen
hitchhiking Highway 16
or panhandling on the streets of Anchorage,
couchsurfing with relatives in Victoria,
or kicking out her boyfriend
after a week of partying
in a trailer park in Salem, Oregon.
Now, as much as ever, and as always,
we need to register together,
lock arms at the front lines, brand
ourselves with mutant DNA strands,
atomic whirls and serial numbers
adding ourselves to the blacklist.
We need to speak in code, languages
the enemy can’t break, slingshot
garlic cloves and tortilla crumbs,
wear armor of lily pads and sandstone
carved into the stately faces of bears
and the faraway look of whitetail deer.
We need to run uphill with rickshaws,
play frisbee with trash lids, hold up
portraits of soldiers who never
made it home, organize a peace-in
on the walls of the Grand Canyon.
We need to stage earnest satirical plays,
hold debate contests with farm animals
at midnight, fall asleep on hammocks
hanging from busy traffic lights.
Now, as much as ever, and as always,
we need to prank call our senators,
take selfies with the authorities
at fundraisers we weren’t invited to,
kneel in prayer at burial grounds
crumbling under dynamite.
We need to rub salve on the belly
of our hearts, meditate on fault lines
as the earth quakes, dance in robes
with fringe that spits medicine, make
love on the eve of the disaster.
CARRIE AYAĠADUK OJANEN (1983–), Iñupiaq, grew up in Nome, Alaska. Her family is a part of the Ugiuvamiut tribe, whom the federal government relocated to Nome. She received her MFA from the University of Montana. Her debut poetry collection, Roughly for the North, was published in 2018.
Gabriel, sing great-grandpa’s song,
head thrown back, black hair gleaming
gray at your temples. So handsome, you,
great-uncle—my Uvah—I imagine my Aupa
looked like you when he was younger,
deep, dark skin and half-moon smile
gleaming, you laugh the same laugh—huh huh huh huh!
Did your heart break, as his, leaving the island—
he stayed an extra winter, left his eldest children
in Nome for school, lived on Ugiuvak—the place for winter—with Auka
and their smallest children—
Mom, age four, was there—and that 16mm
camera recording the last winter
of his traditional life.
Recording that last winter to convince the BIA to send another teacher.
The film was ruined by the August storms.
They wouldn’t have watched it anyway.
Those fuckers.
O God, reading Aupa’s accounts ruptures
everything forever.
Aupa never sings.
But sing, Gabriel, sing, sing grandpa’s song.
Mom and Aya Margaret will stand up to dance.
We welcome everyone to dance with us.
—
You all broke, I know, everyone shattered
Auka and Aupa and their sad kitchen life,
eyes graying the straight, dusty streets of
Nome.
Everybody lost themselves in drink for years.
Some are still lost.
—
Sing, Gabriel, sing.
How beautiful our women are—
wearing floral ugithqoks,
dancing—that passionate precision—
your Frances, Auka, Marie, Mom, Margaret, Caroline, Marilyn,
and your granddaughters—in a line—motions memorized.
And then, the song is over.
They move back to their seats.
Please, Uvah, as we always do,
sing the song again, a second time,
and a second time they will stand up to dance.
ABIGAIL CHABITNOY (1987–), Koniag and Tangirnaq, earned her MFA from Colorado State University, where she was a Crow-Tremblay fellow. A winner of the 2017 Locked Horn Press Poetry Prize, she published her first poetry collection, How to Dress a Fish, in 2019. Of Germanic and Aleut descent, she is a Koniag descendant and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, Alaska, and grew up in Pennsylvania.
It had everything and nothing to do
with mettle
fire before flint before
How many bodies will a lead ball move
through?
How many men can one stand in a row?
When the tide went out, they had nowhere to run
but that was many years ago, and if they have not died they live
happily still.
But you and I know that’s not how the story goes.
I wake more ghosts each morning:
when I was born my mother and father
planted a tree west of the garden.
We ripped it out when I left home—
its roots never took,
its limbs harbored mold in the sticky east wind.
We used to think a weak spine
was inherited
but consider the shark
how some will stop swimming
in their sleep.
How does the forecast change?
We make weather with our teeth.
Why should I be afraid of the sea?
Let the toothed skin lie
if it asks too many bones.
Wait for the waves
to start skipping,
Tie down the drifters and stretch the stomach before the fall.
Don’t turn your back on the water.
What else grows on an island
without trees?
The need to make
makes body—
Others have seen water act this way before,
it was many years ago,
how many bodies a single wave can carry,
how many relatives, casually.
They tied their boats to the tops of trees
so the water wouldn’t lose them,
so the story goes.
Some say it was a boat that killed them, Vasiley and Akelina. Bad heart, traumatized. Accidently.
I’m telling you what happens. Nikifor missed the boat.
Imagine what it might be like
when the waters come
to be a fish
to be twelve strong, to be six, two hundred, or forty
sharks swimming toward you—
NO‘U REVILLA (1987–), Kanaka Maoli and Tahitian, is a queer poet, educator, editor, and performing artist from Kahului, Maui. Her chapbook Say Throne was published in 2011. She served as poetry editor of the Hawaiʻi Review and organized the first Aloha‘Āina Zine workshop in solidarity with the protectors of Mauna Kea in 2015. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she is now an assistant professor of English, teaching creative writing.
for every hard-working father who ever worked
at HC&S, especially mine
Was he a green, long sleeve
jacket & god-fearing man?
On the job, bloodshot.
Marrying metal in his heavy
gloves, bringing justice to his father,
who was also a smoking man.
No bathroom breaks, no helmets, no safe words.
He whistled sugarcane through his neck,
through his unventilated wife,
his chronic black ash daughters.
This is what a burn schedule looks like.
And if believing in god was a respiratory issue,
he was like his father.
Marrying metal to make a family.
At home he smoked before he slept.
In the corner with the door
ajar, cigarette poised like a first-born:
well-behaved, rehearsed.
Curtains drawn, bedrooms medicated.
He was always burning into something.
Part-dark, part-pupils.
For my father, the night was best alone.
When only he could see through
the world and forgive it.
MICHAEL WASSON (1990–), Nimíipuu, Nez Perce, completed his MFA at Oregon State University and currently teaches conversation-based English courses off the coast of Japan. He is the author of Self-Portrait with Smeared Centuries (Éditions des Lisières, 2018), translated into French by Béatrice Machet, and This American Ghost (2017). His awards include a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship in Literature and the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry.
A Poem for the háawtnin’ &
héwlekipx [The Holy Ghost
of You, the Space & Thin Air]
’inept’ipéecwise cilaakt: (I am wanting to) hold a wake / (I am wanting to) hold the body
Had this body been made
of nothing
but its bright skeleton & autumn-
blown skin
I would shut my eyes
into butterfly wings
on a mapped earth. Had the gods
even their own gods, I could re-
learn the very shape
of my face in a puddle of sky-
colored rain. Extinction is
to the hands
as the lips are
to the first gesture
the tongue carves into the slick mouth
just before
prayer. In every way
the world fails
to light the soft inner
machine & marrow
of the bones in motion — I imagine
smudging my tongue along a wall
like the chest
I dare to plunge in-
to, the Braille of every node
blooming out
as if the first day-
light of wintered
snowfall. This night —
like any fleshed boy I dream
of a lyre strung
with the torn hair of hímiin &
in place
of my dried mouth — there
it is. Whispers
in the blue-black dark after c’álalal
c’álalal reach out
toward my teeth to strum
this wilting instrument. &
once awake, I’m holding
its frame to build
a window back in-
to the world. Had this body
been held after all
these years, I would enter
you to find my frozen self
& touch. Like the gutted animal
we take
in offering. & live.
JAMAICA HEOLIMELEIKALANI OSORIO (1991–), Kanaka Maoli, is a poet, performance artist, scholar, and activist from Pālolo, Oʻahu, who is widely known for her spoken-word poetry. She has performed across five continents and was invited to the White House to perform by President and Mrs. Barack Obama in 2009. She was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship in 2017, earned her PhD in English in 2018, and is now an assistant professor of Indigenous Politics at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
What happens to the ones forgotten
the ones who shaped my heart from their rib cages
i want to taste the tears in their names
trace their souls into my vocal chords so that i can feel related again
because i have forgotten my own grandparents’ middle names
Forgotten what color thread god used to sew me together with
There is a culture
Somewhere beneath my skin that i’ve been searching for since i landed here
But it’s hard to feel sometimes
Because at Stanford we are innovative
the city of Macintosh breeds thinkers of tomorrow
and i have forgotten how to remember
But our roots cannot remember themselves
Cannot remember how to dance if we don’t chant for them
And will not sing unless we are listening
but our tongues feel too foreign in our own mouths
we don’t dare speak out loud
and we can’t even remember our own parents’ names
so who will care to remember mine if I don’t teach them
i want to teach my future children
how to spell family with my middle name—Heolimeleikalani
how to hold love with Kamakawiwo‘ole
how to taste culture in the Kumulipo
please
do not forget me
my father
Kamakawiwo‘ole
who could not forget his own
Leialoha
do not forget what’s left
cuz this is all we have
and you won’t find our roots online
We have no dances or chants if we have no history
just rants
no roots
just tears
this is all i have of our family history
and now it’s yours
ʻO Maʻalolaninui ke kāneʻo Lonokaumakahiki ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hānau iaʻo Imaikalani he Kāne
ʻO Imaikalani ke kāneʻo Kekoʻokalani ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Paʻaluhi Kahinuonalani he kāne
ʻO Paʻaluhi Kahinuonalani ke kāneʻo Piʻipiʻi Kealiʻiwaiwaiʻole ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hānau iā‘o Charles Moses Kamakawiwoʻole ʻo Kamehameha ke kane
ʻO Hainaloa ke kāne ʻo Niau ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hāneu ia ʻo Kaluaihonolulu ka wahine
ʻO Kaluaihonolulu ka wahine ʻo Nakoʻoka ke kāne
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Kapahu he wahine
ʻO Kapahu ka wahine ʻo Kua ke kāne
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Daisy Kealiʻiʻaiawaawa he wahine [Koholālele]
ʻO Charles Moses Kamakawiwoʻoleʻo Kamehameha ke kāne ʻo
Daisy Kealiʻiaiʻawaʻawa ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Eliza Leialoha Kamakawiwoʻole he wahine [Kukuihaele]
ʻO Eliza Leialoha Kamakawiwoʻole ka wahine ʻo Emil Montero Osorio ke kāne [Hilo]
Noho pū lāua a hānau ʻia ʻo Elroy Thomas Leialoha Osorio he kāne
ʻO Manūawai ke kāne ʻo Keao ka wahine [South Kona & Kohala]
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Sarah Piʻikea Papanui he wahine
ʻO Sarah Piʻikea Papanui ka wahine ʻo Kam Sheong Akiona
ke kāne
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Nani Kaluahine Kimoe Akiona he wahine
ʻO Nani Kaluahine Kimoe Akiona ka wahine ʻo LeRoy Adam Anthony Kay
ke kāne
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Clara Kuʻulei Kay he wahine
ʻO Elroy Thomas Leialoha Osorio ke kāne ʻo Clara Kuʻulei Kay ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio he kāne
ʻO Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio ke kāne ʻo Mary Carol Dunn ka wahine
Noho pū lāua a hānau ia ʻo Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio
do not forget us
mai poina