November 2020

1

If you play me then you
Play yourself.  That was
All the dead needed
To say. To get the better
Of time, we got better
With time. I left my body
And took on the look
Of a man. I made him
An honest woman.
A diagram of this
Sentence...

as cousins surrounding my ankles. We turn,
become sheep herded in ancestral forest while
chasing each other, evolving shadow under
ch’ígoná’áí as thunder rolls from sky’s hands
downward, waiting to swallow precious
dlǫ’dichiné into its bruising maw, way below—
dził bitł’ááhgee. We agree our mouths into
evening...

One afternoon a wet half-moon
             on the terrain below my lip:

mouth-blades splitting flesh
             to immortalize desire, sheets soiled

after the digging. I never knew
             ink could...