Cibola 53
Shiwanna (2) (cont’d)
Thump unthump the great
  clay drum out of time
thump unthump however they stop
  their breath or cover
eyes & ears & mouths they can’t
  unthump miss
      this
UNTHUMP the skipped heart-
beat UNTHUMP the unraveled
tapestry UNTHUMP shapeshifter’s hoop
the twisted spine UN-
THUMP.
The road unwinds clear
to the fontanel, open fist
someone’s sister has anointed
with yucca suds, bloom
unclenching once in
a hundred years. The gods
are forever unfinished.
Always at the Beginning
they are auguring themselves
from the waters above,
below . . .
But what about those dirty-
faced heroes? They are acting
like the rawest of raw recruits.
They make a game of everything,
killing for sport. And on
the fourth day, from
their shrine beside the little lake
within the younger of the cones
inside the Salt, the hero twins
at last unriddle it: where the sorceress
hides her vital spark. A stone
among stones. On this lake-
within-a-lake, they see it
in a literal flash.
Now they are racing each other to the battle scene.
Now the elder brother hurls a rabbit stick & misses.
Now the younger gives it his best gambler’s cast.
Now he scores a hit.
As the stones spill from
the split gourd
the Chakwena topples, the wind
roaring from her chest.
Tree/house
Who says I’m allergic to numbered lists?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Words on the street
Cibola 52
Shiwanna (2) (cont’d)
Chakwena Woman,
black-skinned ogre,
runs back & forth in front of her white-
robed warriors, catching the arrows.
Her calabash rattle is in constant motion
like a hive of hornets. When the Ashiwi
advance with their medicine priests
she directs her followers to plug
their nostrils with cotton, breathe
only through a cloth.
By the third day the Kyanakwe
seem invincible, even capturing
four of the Ashiwi gods–
though one escapes, & one remains
so obstreperous they think
he must be part female, put him
to grinding corn. Make him don
the dress the Chakwena scorns.
But what happens then
is a thing of genius:
one half of his hair coils up on his scalp–
squash blossom, hummingbird wing–
while the other half still hangs
straight, like a man’s.
Thus from this contest there emerges
something good: a wholly new part
in the sacred repertoire.
__________
black-skinned ogre: As mentioned elsewhere, black and red represent cosmic polarities for a large swath of native North America. White is also often included as a stand-in for black. Presuming that “red” stands for all animating colors (via the association with blood, ergo heart/breath), the two yin-yang poles might better be thought of as black-and-white vs. color.
Ashiwi: A more neutral term for the Ashiwanni (“priestly people”).
a thing of genius: This incident is indeed the mythological origin of the berdache or third gender in Zuni cosmology. Notice that in this matrilinear, matrifocal society, women are perceived as being just as strong as men, albeit in a different way (they possess innately those qualitites that boys must strive to acquire through initiation into the priesthood). In a sense, the presence of a socially accepted transsexual figure is one very good measure of sexual equality. In the last 150 years, some of the most influential members of the Zuni tribe have been berdaches. Their position between genders appears to make them especially adept at bridging the gap beween White and Indian ways, without feeling that they have to choose between the two.
Converse
ME conversen, fr. MF converser, fr. L conversari to live, keep company with, fr. conversus, pp. of convertere to turn around
(Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary)
They’ve been talking for hours. Their conversation has passed through the usual stages of new acquaintances who find they hold many views in common: first the tenuous feeling out, the cautious groping for just the right word or phrase. As trust builds, the pleasure they feel in each other’s company gathers momentum. Nervous laughs give way to easy laughter, and their faces take on a kind of glow. Constant smiling loosens limbs as well as tongues. Initial motions of the head and hand gradually give way to full-body participation, bending from the hips, shifting slowly about in their seats like two trees in the grip of a single wind. It is a wholly improvised and unselfconscious dance; any audience – the stray eavesdropper or barista – is entirely incidental. They scarcely notice how often they talk over top of each other, how frequently they switch positions as the conversation veers madly from one topic to the next.
As connections are multiplied and reinforced, they draw closer and their conversation slows, deepens. They are listening intently, now, and speaking in turn. Grammatically normative sentence structure atrophies, leaving short-but-potent phrases, even single words buoyed by a laugh or expressive gesture, linguistic fragments swimming free in an ocean of light. They each glimpse apprehension in this new, provisional mirror, a joy that is afraid to speak its own name because how can you affix an identity to something so open, so almost not there?
They hang back as long as they can, reveling – then more than reveling. A kind of awe comes over them. The conversation ceases not because words are inadequate, but because they are no longer necessary. With the labyrinth behind them, why cling to the thread? Such a roundabout way to go to arrive at silence!
Signs
[an old poem]
She set her empty bottle down against mine without looking so they would rock together, ringing–whether with a peal or a toll I couldn’t tell. So that even before the words of welcome & the first fumbling for the right place, well in advance of the mingled cries and blessings, I would feel my skin turn to sky & my bones to living water.
Because her eyes held that exact and painful blue one only encounters over country churches–I mean those clapboard firetraps whose belfries offer sanctuary to the long-limbed owls, pale as Puritan angels, that go about their business at odd hours rarely observed in the modern liturgy. Except when some bored child, slipping under the pews, picks up a white wing feather missed by the custodian’s broom.
Let’s watch him as he waves it over his head, running up to the pulpit to show the startled minister. Whose flock shifts uneasily, the old pews creaking, Adam’s apples trembling on scented necks.
* * *
Isn’t every conversation a potential conversion? In order to truly live together in what is called harmony, don’t we need to be continually turning about, looking at things through the eyes of another, converting strangers into friends?
Words on the street
Cibola 51
Shiwanna (2) (cont’d)
The Cactus Society, the Ant Fraternity,
the Hunters, the Bow Priesthood–
in each of the six towns
they tie feathered willow wands
as bait for the spirit beings.
For four times four days & nights
they mix their medicines. Some
for nightmares, some for seeds
of panic. Some to bring rain
to loosen the enemy’s bowstrings, & some
to turn the water in their springs
to liquid fire.
The Salt belongs to herself alone–
how can she be hoarded?
The game animals go only to those
who know the protocols, whose hearts
are clean. How can they be penned?
Sorcery on such a scale
cannot go unanswered.
The medicine priest of the Big Shell Order
of the Helix Society
paces the kiva, growling, snuffling,
blinking his Black Bear eyes,
clacking his teeth.
He drags a claw counter-sunwise
around the prayermeal painting
in front of the altar: gouges
a four-fold road that spirals in.
Where the predator spirits lead
the warriors can never falter.
Landscape with red privy
In the right conditions, even a brief walk can be Kodak-momentous. I remind myself of a chicken, perpetually cocking my head to one side in order to get a better look at a potential morsel. When we were kids, we used to hypnotize chickens by drawing a straight, chalk line with a yardstick on the concrete floor of the verandah, then laying a hen down on her side so that one eye was as close as possible to the end of the line. If nothing came along to disturb it, a chicken so mesmerized could lie that way for hours.
Being right-handed, when I squint to look for a picture, it’s usually my left eye that I close. In strong light, there’s a considerable difference between what I see through each eye. My left is the cold one; I like to think of it as my Yeats eye. Things have a much warmer cast when seen through my right eye.
My awareness of the ambiguity in my own eyesight makes me all the more willing to play with brightness and contrast, hue and saturation, figure and ground.
In order to communicate what I think of as a truer vision, I have to look at things in a highly selective manner. There’s a kind of circumspection to it.
I become a tracker, meaning not only one who tracks, but also one who leaves a track, and – especially in mud season – one who tracks in.
Most photos must be cropped. A crop need not be something planted, but it does imply discrimination at least in the gathering. To crop is to segregate within real or figurative boundaries from the perceptual chaos of nature.
Birds have crops, or gizzards, which they use in lieu of teeth. As anyone who has ever kept chickens knows, they have to swallow many small stones along with their food.
Cropping anticipates digestion. The land passes through our bodies on its way to becoming something else. And we in turn pass through the land, again and again, on the way to our final covenant with the earth.
Words on the street
