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Not clean but splattered
from rain that hits these western roads
from head to toe the season's
wind and rain mock this place, this time,
this dirty game.
Ash to ash, like alchemist twins
blackened hearth and cleansing lies
the gravity of me and man
the thing that follows foot to ground
to gain all that goes to ground
when days are done
but, sometimes, I go now
in search of proofs arroyos lend.
So no, not clean but most obscenely drenched
in sweat and dirt and dew
from morning slides down wrinkling land
listen
vesper, lark, or sparrow hawk –
their fine thin songs stitch pinyon trees
to pellucid skies. Marvel, trace,
hair full of twigs from rushing
headlong through chokecherry.
Not clean, but bramble burred,
next not to heaven and what's more
glad, not next,
but dead on in the gulch
dirt smearing forehead, lips, and lungs.
Whoever is gone
Loveland born
onyx eyes
ebony hair
Ava Gardner at twenty-eight.
Whoever is gone
fed papoose
night bottle
in red velvet
in oceans of tuille.
Whoever is gone was
eaten by wolves
inside out
filched by white
shit-face shamans.
Whoever is gone left
reservation child
grandmother writing
real one reflections
in alphabet art.
And from the start
eastern uncles
walking warriors
trailed the child casting
creation words.
Whoever is gone
captured here
green corn poem
by one whoever
once feared losing.
C. R. Resetarits' (Cherokee) work has appeared in numerous journals including Kenyon Review, Gender Studies, Fabula, Dalhousie Review, and Parameters. Her most recent work will be in the Native Amerrican writing issue of The Florida Review, due out this summer. She recently moved to Washington D.C. after three years in the tiny village of Hursely, Hamptonshire, in England.
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