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My Body Holds Stones

By Laura Tohe

My body
holds
stones
of a tragic
Indian warrior
descending
into sunset
at trail’s end
swallowed by
two centuries.
I’m still trying
to unknot
his silhouette.

My body
holds
stones
of Indian women
surrounded
by wolves
roaring
at their feet,
x’s on
their eyes,
while sand gathers
freely
over their
lost earring.
Voices echo—
I am my sister—
in a canyon
while thunder sleeps

My body
holds
a stone monument
to large small pox blankets.
Jagged winds wail
the color yellow
on the prairies
that lay themselves down
in the dying rays of the sun.

My body
holds
stones
and
words
ground
into
cement steps
inside my childhood
government self.
Tongues
washed
with buckets
of bitter
soap
seep
into the cracks
of sidewalks
at midnight
where I scrub and scrub and
children march over me.

My eyes
hold
the licks
of a wooden snake
that hissed and broke
on his back.
His shame,
his head bowed
to the beast.
I remember
but
he doesn’t.

My body
holds stones
where I stood
in the corner
and looked
into the fractures
between two worlds.

Ne’eshjaa’ sailed over the skyline.
A fat Coyote ran across my path
in winter.
I looked for myself
on both sides.
Counted myself
among the
surviving.

My body
holds stones
too many to count.

My body
holds stones
I cannot pass.

 

 

Listen as Laura Tohe reads "My Body Holds Stones".
Added: Tuesday, March 30, 2021  /  Used with permission.
Laura Tohe
Photo by J Morgan Edwards

Laura Tohe is the Navajo Nation Poet Laureate.  An award-winning poet, her books include No Parole Today, Making Friends with Water, Sister Nations, Tséyi, Deep in the Rock, and Code Talker Stories, which have appeared in the U.S., Canada, and Europe with French, Dutch, and Italian translations.  Her commissioned librettos are Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio on the Naxos Classical Music label and Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World with performances in France in 2019 and 2021. Among her awards are the 2020 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award, the Dan Schilling Public Scholar Award, and was twice nominated for the Pushcart Award.  She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from Arizona State University.

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