That was great.
Thank you, Selene.
We have our next writer.
Chris Hoshnic is a Diné poet, playwright and filmmaker born
to Kinlichíi'nii, born for Táchii'nii.
He leads Diné Kids Film Club, serves
as Editor-in-Chief of Chapter House Journal,
and his work has appeared in POETRY, Kenyon Review
and others.
Please, let's welcome Chris.
[APPLAUSE]
Sorry.
No joke for me, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]
All right.
Well, this is a pastoral prayer for the Kayenta Shopping Center.
The weight, ńdadoodleeł kodi on the reds, the grease,
the grands, kǫ ǫ .
It wakes the peaking cable ties, knit ties running
inside the valleys and mesas.
And I'm sorry the Wi-Fi popped up.
[LAUGHTER]
Turn the turbulent rush.
The sequencing, of KKKKK'ooossss, kǫ ǫ .
Germany, listen, nestle, a wild waste
coarse in manila violent blue.
It wakes, a discropping.
Men boiled to tin foiled roofs, abuse hood.
Kǫ ǫ , a dream work of patience.
Prayer men.
Wonder with them.
This vacant plaza stains.
Stakes them against the corners of the store grounds.
A lonely shadow lives here, kǫ ǫ .
A laundromat, an ace hardware store, a theater,
a wild subway of sorts.
They once called this a Coast.
Kodi, the wishing seas of grief and burialment and fervor
come waist deep in quark blue.
Not a hermit in sight of luce.
A tailored yoke of amber jynx.
Kǫ ǫ , the crepe of a wild Indian washing up against
the highways nízaadgóó, they run through.
Call it pit stop, call Me pixelated camera phone photo.
And in this photograph, your icy fingers
roar across my ceramic tiles.
I call those diyogí.
They bite into the same Whitman lines you savor.
Cause an avalanche on your Rockwell fantasy.
Would you hang me in your bedroom above the baby's crib
and call it diyogí?
Would you call it me?
Kodi, this is all I will remember in the afterlife.
Kodi, this is how they will remember me in the afterlife.
Of course not a bother of warp waning K'os will guide Me back,
Kǫ ǫ , where it, they, us, belong.
Kodi, near a grand hope of a weight.
Now let us pray the weight away along this Coast.
Kodi.
[APPLAUSE]