WEBVTT

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Our next reader.

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Our next poet is
Selene Hofstetter.

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She is a tribal member
of the Confederated

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Tribes of Warm Springs.

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Having spent most of her
life in Southern California,

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she now writes in Colorado.

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Let's give it up for Selene.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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I will be reading
three poems tonight.

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A cedar bundle burning
is to be standing

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in the middle of
a forest on fire.

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But for Californians, this
is another summer bonfire

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happening in the sky.

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It won't burn the whole state.

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Just the inside.

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Like the inside of a pueblo
pot placed underneath a clay

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fragment with wood
logs piled on top.

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The cedar, àxmi, clay
is and will burn.

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But if you run past the
ice plant over the wet sand

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and float in
atàchuush and look up,

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you can imagine that
it's a cloudy day

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with the odd aftertaste
of monterey cypress.

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When burning cedar,
I burn the edges.

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Otherwise, I will be
smudging with a second sun.

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When I make pots, I work
from the inside out.

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Morphing the
malleability of clay

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into a prebaked stone whose
heat seeps into my hands

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and reminds me of the
fire it just left.

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Stone meets stone as my hands
work across àxmi and sky

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to burnish--

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háashsha energy in clay.

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I h háashhaashsha
into the cedar flame

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and I'm reminded of my
káɬa, mother, sister

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whose spirits are a raging
fire consuming San Diego's

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dry valleys.

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They are women who can walk
into atàchuush and burn it away.

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[CHEERING]

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