This next poem is titled "Navajo Introduction."
My friends used to joke, no clans after midnight
And elders would shake rippled heads as sun--
Thank you, Navajos in the room.
[LAUGHS]
--From the east landed the long-pointed lips
spinning, and spinning, and spinning
With string from loose, crinkled hands,
forming the two coyotes in diyoga.
I had a crush on a boy in class until I realized
he was my cousin by clan
Tangled and sticky yarn that unravels
like our umbilical cords buried in rich farm dirts
I still think about him sometimes,
and the distasteful burning I'd feel on my lips
From nights I used to fantasize about his before I knew
Haash dóone'é nílí.
Yá'át'ééh shí éí yinishyé.
It is good, it is good
Hello, I am, I am sunshine, I am medicine
Tłààshchí'í nishłíí dóó Ta'neeszahnii bàshíshchíín.
I am Red Cheek Clan, born for the Tangled People Clan
My mother used to joke we're Red Bottoms
Your butt was bright red when you were born
I learned later there are two translations
Red cheek, red bottom
A clan passed down from my mother and her mother,
And all those Red Cheek Clan mothers before her
Who were born with red bottoms and mesa pinched cheeks
I was told by my father that I was born
with my hand palm outstreched,
Reaching out at my mother's vagina
Children are supposed to be born headfirst, crowned, bloody,
and round,
Not reaching and reaching as though they're
chasing invisible butterflies
Now, when my fingers clench and bend
as I move from place to place,
I think about how the first part of me to enter the world
were my fingertips
Reaching and reaching, perhaps for another hand to hold
Reaching for a name to hold, a family,
An old T-shirt wrinkled from my grip
as you attempted to pull me off
Because why was I holding on so tight?
What was I holding on to?
The first thing they teach us in Navajo language, one
is our clans
How to say our name and where we're from
How do I say that I came from my mother's vagina
With my tiny right arm straight and sprawled
How do I say that my name came from a Navajo man,
An old artist friend my father knew, Daniel Sandin,
A man I've never met, never heard my father talk about
An image of a person I can't conjure,
But lingers in the breath of my Navajo introduction
With elders shake their heads, knowing that my mom had me
before marriage
That I was the reason they married
In my hands, I watch as string droops with light
from the early morning
Of when I thought of confronting my father about his first family
Before me and my sisters and my brother and our mother all knew
Nearly 18 years later
Yá'át'ééh shí éí yinishyé.
It is good, it is good
Hello, I am Tłààshchí'í nishłíí dóó Ta'neeszahnii bàshíshchíín.
I am Red Cheek Clan, born for the Tangled People Clan
Ashííhí éí dashicheii dóó Táchii'nii éí dashinálí.
My maternal grandfather is the Salt People Clan
And my paternal grandmother-- grandfather, sorry,
Is the Red Running into Water People Clan
And it is good, it is good
Even as my family swirls round and round in the wind,
Tied together by our fingertips with white yarn that
unravels from a wise blanket
Smeared with warm winter sunlight on our mouths
And dripping black coffee on our tongues,
I say my introduction with a voice
that reflects all the good things that come from the sun,
All the good things that those before me have passed on
Through love, through care and shale memory
Through names and old crushed faces, like thousands of stars
So' łani many stars gathered, collected,
Like copper pennies in my tiny outstretched hand.
Ahéhee'.
Thank you.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]