I find that as I was growing up my grandfather
was used to singing--
my grandfather on my father's side and that's
why I'm Skidi, a band of the Pawnee.
And he always used to sing what we call dashboard songs.
And so they were war dance songs and he would always
beat on the dashboard.
[RHYTHMICALLY BEATING PODIUM]
And so music it's something that I've found always
permeates everything I write about.
So this next piece shouldn't be of any surprise.
"Hello.
How are you?
Have you been all right through all
those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights?
Telephone line.
Electric Light Orchestra.
Another telephone line.
Spot of energy and emergence knit
together neon pulse a bright, new enterprise in a galaxy far,
far away.
I cried away a familiar set of blue-gray eyes today,
place marked in a river of written telepathy.
[? Romulan ?] [? nun ?] time notwithstanding the tears.
A distance measured in time, even
if I was unaware of my body watershed such heat.
Maybe because I hadn't bothered to remember the spaces
between each careful breath.
A love bite I tried, cried, lied,
to convince my heart with ebb and flow trickery.
Our watercolor words kept my house together
come feast or greasy famine.
The paint may have yellowed, the fine screen door mesh torn.
I told myself to reimagine, edit,
touch-up the picture of us.
Forgetting there was no such image.
That girl, me, survived for 20 years and more on such a diet.
Self-inflicted shards of the truth
found refuge in somebody else's blue-gray eyes, broad forehead,
thick brown hair combed back.
I must believe it myself.
He versus you.
And acknowledge my dream of you was best unrealized.
Regret no longer manifest in what I, we, didn't dare to do.
Regret or something similar borders
the path I stumbled over following your shadow.
I'm not blaming you for lacking the courage
to love me any more than I blame Osito for not loving me
when he didn't want to.
I am guilty of both for him and you.
It doesn't matter which, or why, or even
if my sentiments have changed time.
Maybe distance, maybe.
Just what it takes for me to travel there."
It's always amazing when you're reading your stuff
that you think, wow, that's going to go way faster.
And then you read it and you're like, wow,
that was longer than I thought.
I'm going to read one last piece if you'll indulge me.
This one is written for my grandmother
on my mother's side.
And it's called "John Spoon's Granddaughter."
John Spoon was a trader.
Probably from the turn of the century until about the 1950s.
And he would go down into Mexico.
And he was a wealthy man by O'odham standards.
And there was no banks.
There was just horses and wagons and my grandma
had a really cool car.
One of the first on the reservation at the time.
And heard stories about her blue dress
and her blue bonnet and her white gloves.
So "John Spoon's Granddaughter."
"What can you say about a woman born of ocean
clouds and soral fruit?
I don't mean to brag when I tell you she is beautiful.
I like to think she is a high cactus bloom.
Swirls, bright yellow center, white petals, wide and fragrant
welcoming cobalt dawn.
Fire baptized fingertips.
Pinch virgin dough.
Sure hands and easy movements turn [O'ODHAM]..
Her tortillas flipped upright ensure
the balance of the world.
She can place egg-soaked bread and golden yolk in her mouth
with a grace that makes me hungry.
Each texture encoded in the tiny lines
around her eyes and mouth.
She scratches gardens out of stingy Sonora sand.
She's as sweet indigo blossoms to fruit.
They bow their heavy faces with cool monsoon juices.
[INAUDIBLE], mountain sunsets.
She wants his tea-brewed fingertips
and gilded strands of thread.
Knit scraps of summer and rainbow
quilts to wrap tender brown palms and milk-sweet bellies.
I like to think she is of thunderstorms.
Maybe luscious ocean nectar fills her belly tight
and round to taunt small brown birds into song.
Silver hair and freckles.
She has a mother's body, hips wide, the passage of children,
of her children's children, shared and passed.
Smooth skin and folds, elegant bones.
The crescent moon of their nails possess dark rock luminance.
See these marks on my face?
These flecks of brown and black?
Can you hear the straightness of her back in my speech?
The rise and fall of my voice?
Look here.
Now see his jaw, his shoulder, the curve of his sturdy leg,
the timber and certainty of his boy-child voice.
The dirt he ate as child.
And I as mother were like bones ground fine and red.
Hers and John Spoon's.
Supple fingers trace patterns in sand,
in the throaty desert laugh of a woman.
The gourd song of rain.
Round, shake round, like thunder.
Thunder.
Rainbows.
And indigo fruit."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]