^{translated from the Korean by Stine An}

Late summer or early fall—memories are unreliable Father was lying on his side In the swaying spiderweb, no spider could be seen The spider is hiding, why don’t you try touching the spiderweb But I am afraid The sound of wooden floorboards creaking Withering up for decades, Father rolled over to his other side And when he did, his scent, his warmth Just as I hadn’t touched the spiderweb, I didn’t dare touch my father’s back And so, neither the spider nor my father moved Why couldn’t I grasp that the space would be empty If you can’t see it, is it hiding The shadow that creeps and crawls toward the door to escape The light that casts and gathers the shadow under the gap—I’ll grab its hand so it won’t run away Memories of late summer or early fall are unreliable, and I am still afraid

이야기─늦여름 아니면 초가을

늦여름 아니면 초가을 기억은 믿을 수 없다 아버지는 모로 누워 계셨다 한들거리는 거미줄 거미는 보이지 않았다 거미는, 숨어 있단다 거미줄을 건드려보렴 하지만 나는 무섭다 마루가 삐걱거리는 소리 수십 년째 말라가면서 아버지는 돌아누웠다 그럴 때의 냄새 그럴 때의 온기 거미줄을 건드리지 않은 것처럼 아버지의 등에도 손을 댈 수가 없었다 그러니 거미도 아버지도 움직이지 않았다 비어 있을 거라는 가정은 어째서 하지 않았던 것일까 보이지 않으면 숨어 있는 것일까 엉금엉금 기어 문 쪽으로 달아나는 그림자 문 아래 틈으로 밀어 넣었다가 거두는 빛의 손 잡아야지 도망칠 수 없도록 늦여름 아니면 초가을의 기억은 믿을 수가 없어 나는 아직도 무섭고

          The worst thing about death must be
          the first night.
                    —Juan Ramón Jiménez

Before I opened you, Jiménez,
it never occurred to me that day and night
would continue to circle each other in the ring of death,

but now you have me wondering
if there will also be a sun and a moon
and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set

then repair, each soul alone,
to some ghastly equivalent of a bed.
Or will the first night be the only night,

a darkness for which we have no other name?
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death,
How impossible to write it down.

This is where language will stop,
the horse we have ridden all our lives
rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff.

The word that was in the beginning
and the word that was made flesh—
those and all the other words will cease.

Even now, reading you on this trellised porch,
how can I describe a sun that will shine after death?
But it is enough to frighten me

into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon,
to sunlight bright on water
or fragmented in a grove of trees,

and to look more closely here at these small leaves,
these sentinel thorns,
whose employment it is to guard the rose.

I have spent seventy years trying to persuade you,
to manipulate you with the poems I’ve written,
to remember my people as if they’d been yours—
to flesh out in evocative detail my parents,
my grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts—
knowing that one day I’ll be gone, and without me
to remember them, the poems I’ve written
will have to go it alone. I owe my people
so much, and I want them to enjoy—if not
immortality—a few more good years in the light,
my grandfather patching a tire for a quarter,
his brother weaving a rag rug on his sun porch,
my mother at her humming sewing machine,
my father un-thumping a bolt of brocade,
measuring for new draperies. Perhaps they were
for you, to draw open and see on your lawn
Cousin Eunice Morarend playing her accordion.

You are a Diné woman
A cosmic energy of earth and sky
Nihimá Nahasdzáán
Azhé’é Diyiní

Winter is over
So, we put our stories in the drawer
Then we take them out for the next winter

It is said stories are only told in the winter
So, the bears and snakes do not hear them

My father is not a traditional man
But he grew up as a traditional ashkii yázhí
He speaks the tongue of the sky and earth

of our people
He knows the ways of our land
But denies it all

One day I tell him
about watching coyote and lizard
stories as a young girl in boarding school
in my Navajo culture class

I tell him excitedly how the videos are now on youtube
but I still don’t understand them
because the videos are only in Navajo

I show him the cute coyote and lizard video
in hopes he will translate for me
He stops me the first ten seconds in
And tells me I shouldn’t watch it

Not because he doesn’t believe in cultural preservation
We are only supposed to watch and tell those stories during the winter, he says
Ohhhhhh, I say as I close the app

All the years my dad talks down on our traditions
I find it interesting, he still abides by the way of the seasons
because he knows snake and bear might hear

Or maybe he said it for other reasons

^{Wa-zha’-zhe, name of the Osage tribe . . . who came from the stars.
—“The Osage and the Invisible World: From the Works of Francis LaFlesche”}

                                                   The first language

𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 which Eliza,

                                                                              her grandmother, spoke.

                                           I try to learn

              the words 𐓣𐓟

                                                     from a book, a dictionary.

What was my mother taught

                                                                              as a young girl sitting

                                          on the front stoop

              of her grandma’s house

                                                      inhabited by half-brothers

she revered. Her favorite,

                                                                             Hunky, hand outstretched,

                                           showed her how to catch

             the wild horse

                                                       𐓤𐓘𐓷𐓘 𐓷𐓘𐓲𐓟𐓸𐓣

unbridled in the pasture.

                                                                              She knotted a paisley

                                            bandana around her

             neck. This language

                                                    for throat 𐓰𐓪𐓲𐓟

and tongue 𐓵𐓟𐓺𐓟 –

                                                                                words she learns

                                            to speak but then

               forgets. She loosens

                                                     𐓷𐓟𐓵𐓣͘ the rope

from the horse’s crest. 


 

^{The Osage orthography}

^{𐓏𐒰𐓓𐒰𐓓𐒷 Osage
𐒻𐒷 words
𐒼𐒰𐓏𐒰 𐓏𐒰𐓊𐒷𐓐𐒻 wild horse
𐓈𐓂𐓊𐒷 throat
𐓍𐒷𐓒𐒷 tongue
𐓏𐒷𐓍𐒻͘ rope}

outside the prickling air burned hot
against what we’d left behind

and all that we scraped and cupped
ourselves for while trying to catch

the last vestiges of someone’s history
their life here and back and somewhere

in that hummed and whistled journey
across the plains and valleys and state lines

invisible to hunger and thirst
and the pursuit of want and need

tomorrow the railroad tracks
will shimmer in the heat

of the summer that arrived
as we were heading out of town

because as in those things past
we too have someplace we need to go

what does it matter
that there are no words

to compensate for the longing
and emptiness of the evening’s solitude

brought in by the winds
of our own stormy reluctance

unwilling to settle for anything less
than what we give in our taking

our own words muted by a laughter-less language
rattling bucket-empty like a windmill

spinning against a prairie horizon
that does not distinguish between

yesterday or tomorrow
them or us

his or hers
yours or mine

it was what you didn’t say
that caught my attention

and how you pressed your lips to the wind
your eyes blazing in the moonless night

my hair is still long undyed &
virgin    [a   receiving  blanket
tucked   around   the edges of
my     scalp—       flannel    you
serged  &  gave  as  gifts]   you
said  so  many  times  a  white
man   would   convince  me to
cut  my hair & they have tried
[or tell me how  lovely  it is in
a way that makes me want  to
sheer   my   head   clean]  you
didn’t   want   me   to  cut  my
hair—    your   mother’s   long
silver      when      rheumatoid
clawed     her   hands—    your
father   [who   called  me  only
long-legged   gal]  braided her
hair    despite   his   own  farm
hands   [it’s   not   as   easy   as
saying    tradish]  you  a   navy
photog—  hair styled  close  to
the  neck  &  later  thinned  by
medications  [it’s  not  as  easy
as     saying     i     share     your
mother’s      first     &     middle
name]    it’s   not  as   easy    as
saying   i   have  a  man  whose
last    name     is     scotch-irish
common

it’s 

              not

     
                             as



                                             easy

with grievance’s command.

I am the daughter she trains
to translate lightning.

I am the half-deaf child she assigned
to tone-deaf judges.

I am the girl
riding shot-gun to iron.

I am birthing feet first
with no mid-wife to catch.

I sprint, high-jump,
and fist-fight in her defense. 

I am a dialect
born inside her quietude.

I susurrate incantations
transcribing her rivered idioms.

She is rivered remembering,
and I am her subpoenas.

We were never ones to avoid pain 
even if we found him in another person.

And when we do (find him again)—
let him have not been born in the rain 

and grown up to become a storm. 
His kisses lightning that scorches the earth. 

As young girls, our grandmothers warned us 
When there is lightning, cover all the mirrors. 

But, one night thunder snapped; 
its rumble shattering the vanity.

We’ve chased cloudbursts ever since. 
Committed ourselves to flood and flight.

For girls like us who pray to the Sky Beings—  
Protect us whenever we go 
                                          where we were never meant to be. 
Put tobacco down 
for the ones

with Creator-shaped holes in our hearts. 
We spend lifetimes trying to fill,

to feel. What is the medicine for this?

Our mothers tell us (as they taught) 
Send them love. Send them love. Send [say it] love—

So, praise our fathers who left in the night,
mapping us into unlovable.

They made us tough as nails. Now we know 
how to hold ourselves together.

Praise the ones who listened 
when girls like us asked them to leave.

Praise the lovers who never returned.
You helped us no longer be afraid of ghosts.

For girls like us, 
the wound never fully heals.

The gentle rhythm of its pulse, a reminder to
praise our mothers for teaching us words are seeds.

We plant, bloom ourselves anew.
Praise the lightning. Praise the storms

we run through
because girls like us know—

this is where 
our medicine comes from.

If I was president
I would help people
and be a good representative
and not lose to profanity
as people stay repetitive
The news would report neatly
as the issues stay relevant
We won’t slack again
I’ll be there for rebuttal
We will get started in a position
of greatness, which is ever so nice
So I’m willing to take risks for the
country and roll the dice
but as for a poetic melody
the world is full of treachery
mile to mile betrayal shall
stay under me, I’ll be
the role model, the one
to step up as I must
We win as we stand and forever
God we trust.

Dear President,

I’m a Hispanic immigrant
You know me
You’ve heard me.

But you don’t

You know my story
You know where I’m from
You know what I look for
You know what I want.

But you don’t

Like thousands of people
Like thousands of stories
I’m a Hispanic immigrant
But you don’t know me.

I left pinolillo y cacao helado
Fritangas los viernes en la noche
Nacatamal los fines de semana
A mi abuela en la casa

Al perrito que quedó solo y llorando
A mi Nicaragua

Mi Nicaragua y su rica cultura
Sus hermosas playas y volcanes ardientes
Su gente amorosa y hermosa

I left my Nicaragua hoping
That my future would look brighter here

I left hoping

Y todo por el
“American Dream”

El American Dream que se va desvaneciendo
The longer I stay
Because the longer I stay
I realize
I am not heard
I am not seen
And I am not wanted here

“Permanent residency or citizenship”
Is the first requisite for any scholarship

Because I have to be one of them
I have to be an American
I have to speak English
In order to have real opportunities

Because while I’m still Hispanic
While I’m still an immigrant
There’s no American Dream

¿Y el sueño americano?

With no scholarships
How do I pay ten thousand dollars per year?
How can my immigrant parents with immigrants’ jobs pay ten thousand dollars per year for each of their children? Or even one?

Where’s the American Dream for them?

There isn’t one
Cause they can’t speak English
And they have to be American

The American Dream
That promised we could study, work, live
Fades away

And if there are so many stories like mine?
If there are so many people like me
If they decide to take away my identity and label me as just another immigrant
If presidents, Americans, put all of us into one group
If they assume that they know each one of our stories and each one of our needs
If they think their system is fair
If they think that they’re helping us
If they think they know what’s best for us
If they know immigrants so well
Then how are we still not seen?
How are we still so overlooked?
How are we still so overworked?

Working for a government that does not want us in their country
That is the American Dream.

When I walk around downtown Durango
I sometimes find myself searching for the location
Of shops and restaurants no longer there

With quiet intention, I will walk past familiar places:
Carver’s, Brown’s Shoe, Maria’s Bookshop

When in deep thought, I walk into the Animas
Chocolate Company – and like the numerous times
Before, the rows of truffles within the case

Deeply absorb me – the chocolatier’s artistry of
Small batch truffles, neatly arranged

Multi-colored, diversely shaped, shiny speckled &
smooth surfaced, gold dusted, nut-layered
globes rotate into my thoughts, a lasso spiraling

my focus like a funnel, like a warm caress leading me
by the hand, a lover’s scent lingering in the air

I do not buy a tray of truffles, nor an Americano coffee,
or any discounted chocolate tucked in the bin
by the east wall – rather I deeply absorb into

The something missing from this morning – the lingered
Yearning, the inability to coax last night’s thoughts:

Come forth & sing! Strands of hair beneath my pillow
Lost (or loose among) – inventoried in last month’s
Balance sheet – Did I?

O Asphyxiation – how You applaud My lapses
The lapping of consummating downtown walks

This evening there is a ruckus on Main St.
I lift my head, and see Nancy who just came from
The Pride event at the 11th St. Station

She’s covered with rainbow hearts &
We split one down the middle and pose

Click
Click
Click again

The goofiness, the anointing of laughter, the
Hug in broad daylight on Main St. in this

Mountain desert, tourist-tangled, tousled about
Like miners searching for a Mother-lode-of-
Gold town, the place I call home