TWELVE INDIGENOUS POEMS FOR DECEMBER
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IF I MUST DIE by Refaat Alareer
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
Refaat Alareer: highly esteemed Palestinian academic & poet, who was killed,
with his family, by Israel bombing during the first week of December, 2023
Displaced by Mosab Abu Toha
I am neither in nor out.
I am in between.
I am not part of anything.
I am a shadow of something.
At best,
I am a thing that
does not really
exist.
I am weightless,
a speck of time
in Gaza.
But I will remain
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s only English-language library.
In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy … ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me … and I forgot, like you, to die.
Mahmoud Darwish, “To Our Land” from The Butterfly’s Burden. Darwish was regarded as Palestine's national poet.
To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence
To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon … and a hidden chasm
To our land,
and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,
holy books … and an identity wound
To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past
To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night,
is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates what’s outside it …
As for us, inside,
we suffocate more!
Mahmoud Darwish, “To Our Land” from The Butterfly’s Burden. Darwish was regarded as Palestine's national poet.
Children by Abu Al-Hayyat (translated by Fady Joudah)
A child’s hand sticks out of the rubble
and sends me counting
my three children’s limbs,
their digits, examining their teeth
and eyebrows.
The silenced voices in Yarmouk
turn the volume up on my radio, TV,
and drown the songs on my laptop.
I pinch my kids in their love handles:
let there be crying,
let there be noise.
And the hungry hearts
at Qalandia checkpoint open my mouth:
I’m ready for my extra salty
emotional eating to feed weeping
eyes everywhere.
You Can Be the Last Leaf, selected poems by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
If I Laid Them End to End by Kimberly Blaeser
That old guy with the muskrat soup
slurps it loudly from the ladle
Hoowah, pretty good stuff!
You shift your weight on the stool
raise the bad leg just enough
and retrieve the red bandana hankie.
Talk still spills like sunshine
over the knife-marred counter
as slowly you wipe the can
push the cloth back in your pocket
and cough down the grape pop
glancing at the bobbing black head
where it surfaced in the pot.
The burned farm. That hungry year.
The long walk from Strawberry Mountain
warmed now with the weight
of fresh butchered wiiyaas in your pack.
Mum’s baking soda biscuits mixed and cut
lined waiting in the tin pan
like our little kids’ faces at the window.
Sure took the wrinkle out of our bellies that night.
One opening day when those two old fishermen
ended up drunk clinging to the canoe.
The hunt for diamond willow,
beaver camp on Easter weekend,
the whitefish feeding on wax worms,
the string of crappies slipped from your hand,
the missing outhouse floor,
training waaboose,
feeding the least weasel,
tales from working on the ships,
from boiling sap, planting trees, pounding, carving,
and then the cigar box memories
of those old time Indians
who could really tell stories . .
Kimberly Blaeser is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and grew up on the reservation in northwestern Minnesota. Blaeser worked as a journalist before earning her PhD from the University of Notre Dame
Stone Mother by Tanaya Winder
I was born in the desert
learned to cherish water
like it was created from tears.
I grew up hearing the legend, the lesson
of the Stone Mother who cried
enough cries to make an entire lake
from sadness. From her, we learned
what must be done and that the sacrifices
you make for your people are sacred.
We are all related
and sometimes it takes
a revolution to be awakened.
You see, the power of a single tear lies in the story.
It’s birthed from feeling and following
the pain as it echoes into the canyon of grieving.
It’s the path you stumble and walk
until you push and claw your way through to acceptance.
For us, stories have always been for lessons.
Tanaya Winder comes from an intertribal lineage of Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, and Duckwater Shoshone Tribe
After Sacred Water by Kinsale Hueston
[…] IV. In the third world, coyote took the water monster’s baby
so the water monster decided to make it rain endlessly
the water rose and flooded and choked the peaks
of sacred mountains
and the beings that lived there
did not know where to escape the flood
what saved the world was a reed curling
into the sky a way to climb out into the fourth world
an offering by First Man beloved by the gods
the one from which we all were formed
there are things that remain stolen that holy people
weep for and others look to us with upturned hands
ask where the reeds come from flee to the highest peaks
dream of another world they can scurry into
through a wound in the sky
we have no answer for them we have known this the entire time
tell our stories go to the water
tend this land
and remember
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/five-indigenous-poets-explore-loss-and-love-their-native-lands Kinsale Hueston is a Diné poet, performer, and junior at Yale University studying the intersections of cultural (re)vitalization movements, Indigenous poetry, and Indigenous feminism.
The Archive of Our Relation by Edyka Chilome
I admit, the mourning is constant
the names, the words, the whispers
colors and textures that were lost,
persecuted, poisoned, disinherited,
extracted, cut down, shaved, kidnapped,
unclaimed, and forgotten. An endless war
I too report, my silence has not saved me
yet running water calls spirits/hidden in me carefully
waiting for me to quiet the mind/ so they may wake me right on time
to witness the great expanse/a dance so tender
it gently wakes the sun
In gratitude the sun rises/ offers its power
so that we may see/ all that has been done
all that is yet to come
In humility and courage/ I rise, offer my power
so that I may see/all that has been done
and you who has yet to become
Tumal sinú
may the sun always shine on you
a prayer weaved by/ the most precious parts of me
a breath/ the most potent offering
to our becoming
I report, the water, the earth, the seeds
and the grace of a dancing sky
remain a pure reflection
the wealth of our inheritance
the heart of our connection
the archive of our relation
if we so choose to co-conspire
to re-member
Agua es vida, Water is life/we are the water and
remembering has offered us
our lives, love letters bloomed beautiful
in anticipation of you//travel guides to the
ancient futures that are due/ living memory of
gestation and labor/ humble testimonies
conspired in your favor
You see, more than hope
we hold a deep knowing
all creation moves in circle
all that was once dead is reborn
the breaking of the seed
a necessary violence
forgiveness a necessary blooming
resistance a necessary rooting
rebuilding a defining act of courage
letting go a radical act of love
I too agree with trees
I do not shy away from the darkness
Nor do I fear the wind
I remember the water
and take root in the memory of you
the living archive of relation
a sweet and sacred confirmation
that we are still alive
Edyka Chilomé is a poet, and child of migrant activists from the occupied lands of the Zacateco (Mexico) as well as Lenca (El Salvador) people
K.YAH/SAAD: TOWARD AN OPEN POETICS by Jake Skeets
I admit, the mourning is constant
the names, the words, the whispers
colors and textures that were lost,
persecuted, poisoned, disinherited,
extracted, cut down, shaved, kidnapped,
unclaimed, and forgotten. An endless war
I too report, my silence has not saved me
yet running water calls spirits/hidden in me carefully
waiting for me to quiet the mind/ so they may wake me right on time
to witness the great expanse/a dance so tender
it gently wakes the sun
In gratitude the sun rises/ offers its power
so that we may see/ all that has been done
all that is yet to come
In humility and courage/ I rise, offer my power
so that I may see/all that has been done
and you who has yet to become
Tumal sinú
may the sun always shine on you
a prayer weaved by/ the most precious parts of me
a breath/ the most potent offering
to our becoming
I report, the water, the earth, the seeds
and the grace of a dancing sky
remain a pure reflection
the wealth of our inheritance
the heart of our connection
the archive of our relation
if we so choose to co-conspire
to re-member
Agua es vida, Water is life/we are the water and
remembering has offered us
our lives, love letters bloomed beautiful
in anticipation of you//travel guides to the
ancient futures that are due/ living memory of
gestation and labor/ humble testimonies
conspired in your favor
You see, more than hope
we hold a deep knowing
all creation moves in circle
all that was once dead is reborn
the breaking of the seed
a necessary violence
forgiveness a necessary blooming
resistance a necessary rooting
rebuilding a defining act of courage
letting go a radical act of love
I too agree with trees
I do not shy away from the darkness
Nor do I fear the wind
I remember the water
and take root in the memory of you
the living archive of relation
a sweet and sacred confirmation
that we are still alive
Jake Skeets is a poet and teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, located within the Navajo Nation. His first book is Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, a winner of the 2018 National Poetry Series.
THE REZ SISTERS II by Billy-Ray Belcourt
After Tomson highway
girl of surplus. girl who is made from fragments. she who can only
be spoken of by way of synecdoche. she whose name cannot be
enunciated only mouthed.
mother of that which cannot be mothered. mother who wants
nothing and everything at the same time. she who gave birth to
herself three times: 1. the miscarriage. 2. the shrunken world.
3.the aftermath.
sister of forest fire. sister who dwells in the wreckage. she who forages
for the right things in the wrong places. nothing is utopia and so she
prays to a god for a back that can bend like a tree splitting open to
make room for the heat.
aunt of the sovereignty of dust. aunt of that which cannot be
negated entirely. she who is magic because she goes missing and
comes back. she who walks upside down on the ceiling of the
world and does not fall.
kookum of love in spite of it all. kookum who made a man out of
a memory. she who is a country unto herself.
father of ash. father of a past without a mouth. he who ate too much
of the sunset.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta, and a 2016 Rhodes Scholar who holds a M.St. in Women’s Studies from the University of Oxford.
I LOST MY TALK by Rita Joe
I lost my talk
The talk you took away.
When I was a little girl
At Shubenacadie school.
You snatched it away:
I speak like you
I think like you
I create like you
The scrambled ballad, about my word.
Two ways I talk
Both ways I say,
Your way is more powerful.
So gently I offer my hand and ask,
Let me find my talk
So I can teach you about me.
Born in Whycocomagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Rita Joe was the author of six books, including her 1978 debut collection, Poems of Rita Joe