Sukdu’a

My Chada¹ told stories.

 Some of them were true.

 To be fair, they were true,

 and his lies were the truths

 he wouldn’t speak.

His daughter, my mother, never lies. She left him

 and his stories on a shelf.

 She raised me far from his

 shadow. She wanted me

to live unhaunted by the spirits his silences birthed.

 Then, none of us knew the ghosts

 that live in the margins around

 story. That absence      leaves

its own trace. You can see it in the pale between

my freckles. In your pause before asking

where I’m from. My pause

before I say, I’m from here. My pause

before I say, the opposite of exotic. Pause

between my other self      and my other

self.

You can find my Chada’s stories in places like this.

In museums, in libraries, on cassettes and online catalogs.

I did. I listen to his voice trapped in filmy recordings

and imagine resurrection is like this:

 One form of data becomes a new form

 living in clouds.

I listen to the stories Chada shared. My favorites

are not his. They are stories he only transcribed.

He learned them one way, he told them another.

The distance between the learning and the telling

 is a lie every writer accepts.

My favorite, the one I want most to be true,

is the sukdu’a about Ggugguyni and how stories began.

Before I tell it to you, I want you to know

the crow’s wing hovers around the story’s edge.

When Chada wrote Ggugguyni, the gurgle-breath

Raven names herself with, another translated

it as crow.² The translator meant crow while

I know what Chada meant. He meant Ggugguyni.

This is what a taboo is—one form is said

and another is meant. Crow for raven.           for child.

Taboos are difficult to document

when no one will speak them.

This is the story I heard. (I will abridge the work

and present it as commentary to avoid the appearance

of academic plagiarism. I know I haven’t started

telling it yet. Taboos are a cousin to copyrights.)

I am still learning to tell this story.

Once the Dena’ina sang. Our song keeps

our time. Di ya du hu. This is how we order

ourselves

 and our days.

Once Ggugguyni in her human form

walked by the river. She left her right eye

behind as a lookout. The eye saw Dena’ina

draw near and it called to Ggugguyni.

Ggugguyni cried to the Dena’ina, Don’t touch

but watch! She tossed her eye into the air

three times. It looks out for your luck, she said.

She sang to the people, Ch’I’ushi, Ch’I’un,

We’ve found a wonder. Then, she left.

Later she returned in disguise to spy. She heard

the Dena’ina sing her song and tell her story.

This pleased her vanity. She returned again³

disguised with more stories and songs. She loved

to hear about herself: how clever, how foolish,

how gifted with stories.

What I like about this story is that it moves

from one point to another and it’s easy

to identify the moments of change

and their catalysts.

What I like about this story is Ggugguyni moves

from bird form to human form the way I want

to move to the opposite of other.

What I like about this story is that the body

becomes what it needs to be to tell its story

and be heard.