Photo by Nicolás Arellano
   

To Sing a Man’s Love to You

Day One.
Go under water at the glow of morning. Face East. Dry by the sun’s rays. Where you hear the beloved whistle, steal his step. Hold his footprints in your hands and whisper, This is your name. These are your people.
 
Day Two.
Wash your face and hands in river water at dawn. Face North. Find the seed of a hardwood tree and hold it in your hands. Speak to it. This is your name. These are your people.
 
Day Three.
Stand in still water at dusk. Wet your hair. Face West. Cup the water in your hands and sing to it. This is your name. These are your people. Use this water and the earth imprinted with the love’s step to plant the seed in a container that will fit beneath your bed. Let the seed germinate under good dreams.
 
Day Four.
Rise with the sun and drink four sips of water. Remove the container and raise it in your hands. Face South. Tell it, This is your name. These are your people. Replace below your bed.
 
Repeat this last orning’s ritual daily, blessing water to keep the soil wet, reminding the lover his name, for approximately four weeks or until the seed displays visible roots. Transfer the seed outdoors on a new moon in early sunlight, returning these words in each direction:
 
This is your name. These are your people.
 
This is your name. These are your people. + This is your name. These are your people.
 
This is your name. These are your people.
 



How is it

we stopped for directions to Cabo Polonio
and I smelled Fry bread? It couldn’t be,
I said, telling you quickly my hungry Indian
history. You replied Estas son tortas fritas,
una comida del campo desde hace mucho tiempo,
then Oh my God, those are my grandfathers!
And there they were, from Aguas Dulces,
visiting an old friend who ran the roadside stand,
a woman already wrapping the sweet dough
and packing it in a plastic bag with napkins
for us to eat on the sand dunes, trying to figure out
with your grandmother how long it had been
since the last time she’d seen you, only then
as tall as the hand she held at the pocket
of her thin denim skirt, and how was it again
that you and she were related. I watched this
in English, waiting to taste the difference
I wouldn’t find in what your ancestors
and my ancestors fed us. How is it
we shared this flour and fat they fried
as golden as buttered toast, on a dune buggy
ride to a village without roads or electricity,
ate this ancient bread on ancient rocks
watching seals you call los lobos
de mar, envisioning a new Picasso?
We ate these tortas as the sun dove,
as the moon rose a day before it would be full,
telling each other the names of our appetites
in two languages winnowed down to basics:
Do you like me? Do you like the bread? How is it?



To Remove Anger

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, give him a place to rest his thundering headspin. Let him see an all-red man removing the venom from the spider. Remaking tobacco with his right hand. To pacify the coiled serpent.

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, wrap him a stick of red cedar and build him a fire to heat the rocks he carries. Offer those stones creek water and watch them crack into jewels. Help him dig a cave under the wet roots of a cypress tree. Help him bury them.

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, make him a supper of sofkee and sweetcorn, roast him the red fish you call from the river, feed him ripe scuppernongs picked with your fingers.

That man of black wood, that man with the blankets, remind him he is a kinsman, a red man, a great wizard united with another great wizard, to fail in nothing. Remake tobacco with the left hand in a counterclockwise direction.



Chip Livingston is the author of The Museum of False Starts (Gival, 2010) and the chapbook Alarum: (Other Rooms, 2007). His poems and stories have appeared in Barrow Street, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Red Ink, Yellow Medicine Review and New American Writing. Chip descends from Muscogee Creek, French Canadian, and Scottish ancestors. He lives in New York City.

 

 

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