wyrdwind

Roots

When working an affliction,

how a person feels is as important

as what you do. Two truths.

Ó Muiris of Connacht

became Morris of Mississippi

became father

to a Choctaw daughter

at the end of the Trail of Tears.

She never knew her mother,

who gave her Georgia,

called only what he named her for.

Na yimmi ishi ho in full,

the closest words for faith

in her mother tongue. Command form.

An anglicized abbreviation, a blessing,

and the only child to outlive him.

One disarmed a white man

and shot him dead with his own gun

point blank, only to be publicly hung.

One jumped onto a moving train

and it was just his time to go.

Sons.

He stood by his only girl

when she escaped residential school,

killed her husband and “fell out” with the church.

Got right with God on their own terms.

Father, daughter, granddaughters,

in their patch of forest

out in Oklahoma,

guessing at the grave

of Hotonah Honobia.

Their defiant

200 year keepsake

my mother given me.

The literal translation

is “you must believe.”

Lesson

There’s power in the place

an animal goes to birth or bleed.

Honor the inconvenience

when given vulnerability.

Stop pretending

you’ve somewhere else to be.

The price of money

is so much life.

Learn to mind

the hearth of need.

What burns hot, or slow,

throws smoke, or kindling.

Chips and curls crack

and shiver as they breathe.

Turn over.

Whether it’s something or nothing,

I want you here with me.

Laughing or sobbing,

I want you here with me.

Silent.

Those ashes cold

with me.

Unfit for Human Habitation

I can tell

cats apart without looking

from the way their tails twitch

against my legs.

Hear electrical currents, smell gas

better than utility company instruments.

No matter how faint it is,

I know what kind, where.

I know the difference

between natural and synthetic cloth

from the brush of a single fingertip.

The point is, precious little

never escapes my notice.

I only seem impassive,

a fathomless moonscape.

I remember

every subtext or story, every drop

of joy or pain you ever left with me,

a regolith reliquary.

Never had the safety of an atmosphere.

Mobile homes have hollow walls and floors,

you can hear

roaches clicking when it rains, mystery

mouths gnawing as far as the kitchen,

everything your mother really thinks

about your existence.

Hear your father’s deafening

lack of resistance.

I learned to sing

when I covered my ears.

In dreams

I was still stuck here,

but blessed silence

and all the rotted, gaping

holes held

happy dogs and cats.

Going Native

He had some Latin and Gaelic,

English and Choctaw fluent,

when Andrew Jackson ordered the march,

bitter successive waves, at last

they pulled him to translate.

For Adam this trip was one way,

the people arrived and he wished

to remain.

Some say

he stole Hotonah away,

the daughter of an influential family,

one of the thirteen clans.

They were the same age.

She perished when Faith was two,

he never remarried. Cared

for three generations of our matriline,

his wife’s blind and disabled sister

until she died. Granddaughters named

Salt-Mighty in Battle and Pearl respectively.

How often rumors reek of jealousy.

Certain facts speak on a man.

Buffered the colonizer government,

walked through hell, left his family behind to stay her side,

then spent every day of his life—

thirty years without his wife—

proving that when Hotonah chose him,

she chose right.

Electrolytes

Entertain the inner lives of children.

If he comes crawling up meowing,

that’s a cat.

The floor is lava, Hey Mom,

why this, what’s that, silly dance.

Charades. Redirect. Can I help?

When all your friends have kids,

you pass from house to house,

seven conversations at every table.

Darkest secrets over a pot, fate of the world,

triplets squealing around your skirt,

middles showing you their favorite stuff,

oldest nursing teen drama.

Here’s where I have patience.

Only adults are full of shit.

Act like it’s just diapers at the start,

and not diapers at the end.

So important.

A young woman,

dress in shreds,

drug her wagon to our station

once a week. Family hospitalized

with salt deficiency. That means

no electricity, means no A/C,

means death

in this heat.

I’ll talk about anything

at length. She’d say

we had two ghosts at our place,

but don’t worry

they’re good ones.

Ask what the temperature was,

dripping stink of Fucking Hot.

Ask questions about products.

Pray for clouds.

Said if someday

I found a strange shopping cart,

that’s her best one.

Said I know its worth,

and would find who needs it most,

if someday she’s gone.

Boo

My favorite things about Cinderellas

are the kitchens, animals, and tattered clothes.

Her kindness dearth of hope, how she shares

her home with humble creatures, hay or soot.

She’s happy in a barn. An attic.

I’d be happy in a tent, a mud hut.

When I say I want

the maximum amount

of physical affection, that’s

queen bee status. So much cuddles

the whole hive wears my pheromones,

and no one fights. I close my eyes

to the sound of busy fluffy bodies,

our heartbeat. Do bees sleep?

Anyway, I relate

to necessity and improvisation,

turn bare bones into something greater.

When as far as those kids were concerned,

my dance brought sudden thunderstorms.

A story told still if there’s a single cloud

on an otherwise spotless radar.

Rain will fall if I dance again,

for all the Ellas no one saved,

I refuse to write their ending tragic,

for all the tears and dirt and blood,

those girls grew up

and became magic.

Tidal Lock

Faith had a good run,

I was a toddler at a reunion

and someone yet lived remembered her,

our clan’s principle matriarch.

Mother wanted me to know

my sore thumb name’s on a tombstone.

Where I come from.

To meet my elders.

She loved wild garlic and green onions.

Delicious weeds called ramps.

That tracks.

My blood’s vamp battery acid,

sorry what infection?

Eat that shit right out the ground,

fuck whatever’s crawlin’ on it.

Nobody used the name first

’cause she was the blackest sheep,

everyone said she looked mean.

Her centenarian grandson cried.

It’s funny.

My great aunt’s black Chow Chow Fluffy

who disdained everybody

blocked my immediate family, growled

if any of them tried

to put a hand or took tone with me,

basked in all the kisses

I showered on her face, unbothered

while I nuzzled into her fur all night.

Infinite patience.

So auntie left me her cedar hope chest.

Rubies and silver.

She never had kids.

Called me closest to her heart

in her will.

That’s the secret when there’s no escape.

When your mother ignores or screams

in front of friends to humiliate,

when your dad throws chairs

across the room so hard they break,

when your drill sergeant thinks loud makes right,

when your minimum wage workplace

is a den of OSHA violations, venom, and lies:

go blank.

Turn to the cozy dark inside.

Let them learn on impact,

kick up a cloud of lunar shards,

lungs full of lethal diamond dust,

gasp for breath in shreds.

Put what’s soft so deep no one can touch,

in the shadow of your hope chest.