Fugal
A shriek, dawn-like, birdless—an ordained
stratum—pulsing canticle of the numen.
The chant coarsely flung at the bosky ridges
of shattered clavicle—skull doused in lacquer.
Hear into the negative of bone the annals of a hut,
lamina of guttural gowk.
Fluted brinks of obsidian
cloaked dimly in canon—clamor, mist, shaping the glum
worship. The rite of splay—to utter a corpse to dazzle—
entombing the nebulous flesh in funerary hum, a syllabic urn.
Copyright © 2023 by Santee Frazier. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 21, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Fugal’ distills ideas regarding the usage of human remains to establish epistemologies that relegate Indigenous peoples to primitive existences. This work is part of a series of sound poems that seek to disassemble and decouple language assigned to marginalized cultures.”
—Santee Frazier
Santee Frazier
Santee Frazier is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. He is the author of Dark Thirty (University of Arizona Press, 2009).