Heid E. Erdrich
Two POEMS
Non-Fiction Craft Lesson in March
It is not wrong to speak it—who you were when young, who you wish to be when old. It is not wrong to speak of the ones who moved you, who moved through you. It is only that it is hard. A little hard. It leaves a mild, mineral tang.
We have always known our view is skewed by place, culture, sex, gender, and the order of your coming into being among a tumble of siblings. Cousins, too. All of this made you—made the you who sees, who focuses the lens, who focuses on those you wish to speak of, those you wish to relate. Or not wish exactly, but sometimes must. And if those we must speak of will read our words? Or live with what others read?
Shall we speak only of the dead?
That seems less right at times, to speak of the dead. I do not mean the defenseless dead, or the revered dead of long ago. I mean the dead who withdrew their names from our mouths. We do not speak of them.
We do not speak to them so they do not answer. We do not speak those names in order that they not answer. We no longer want to hear their voices, and though they sometimes mutter, it matters that they are not bid to speak.
Maple sap runs clear although the hardwood heart of maple is almost red. Maple darkens as it distills, boils down, condenses and sugars. A leaf of cedar minds the boil. Make whatever metaphor you will. I am simply reminded of maple when I think of the dead.
Wild Turkey
Not the bottle.
Not the burn on the lips,
lit throat glow.
Not even wild, really,
but a small-town bird
whose burgundy throat
shimmers like nothing ever.
A huge bird, impressive,
who lurches and stalks me
window to window in this
desert retreat.
What does he want?
Clearly he is lonely
pecks his reflection
and speaks to it in a low gubble
(not gobble) gubbles so tenderly.
Soon as I think of him, his eye hits on me.
We have watched each other for days.
His shifting colors fascinate me. His territorial strut.
But it is his bald and blue-red head,
his old man habits and gait that move me.
If I even think of him, I taste whiskey.
Drunk on solitude, I’d talk to anybody.
I try his language on my lips.
His keen response burns like shame.
Heid E. Erdrich is author of eight books, most recently the poetry collection Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media. Her second anthology, New Poets of Native Nations, is from Graywolf Press. Heid is Ojibwe, enrolled at Turtle Mountain. She teaches in the Augsburg College MFA Program.