Green Linden Press

Here We Begin with Gesture

Bill bends—his left leg a stiffening
he works around. On three we lift
one fallen cross pole, then another.
With red bandana he mops his brow.

Twelve feet away a tv crew itches—
counting down. Their deadline is news feed.

This repair is not the work, but the preamble.
White pine. Wooden grave houses.
Fragrant grains of kinnikinnick dampen
as we hold them (in the left, the heart hand).

Nearby ferns and grasses sway like dancers
their songs steady (not gone)—a soft shu-shu
while Ninzhishenh’s rimy bird voice rises,
Our tobacco gift, our words, placed—just so.

Suddenly Uncle straightens, lengthens his neck
to stare through dark Buddy Holly IHS rims,
fixes on the expectant lens of the KSTP camera—
tripod and glass viewfinder squaring our world.

Now his chin lifts, his lips, his flannelled arm;
they arc slowly like the sun cupping the land—
giizis carressing Anishinaabe-akiing dawn to dusk.
All of us wait. In the silence of old trees, still standing.

Mazinigwaaso: Florets

When I am embroidering flowers I inhale,
remember again each petal-deep pocket
each blossom like a tiny hand lifted.
Misko'o (red the dress of other murdered).

My fingers hunger. Stitches, calloused tips
an offering to florals and woodland spirits
who have curved our bodies in season—
centers a holy that open damp with nectar.

Wanton our bloom; wanton our disappearance:
ikwewag, women wild and heedless as flora
in a world innocent of scythe and pesticide—
innocent of the trampling oil nations who own.

Waabigwaniikaag, an abundance we make
of the broken—when burst becomes seed.

Binesiwag 

Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. Her poetry collections include Copper Yearning, Apprenticed to Justice, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser, an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation who grew up on the reservation. A Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee and Institute of American Indian Arts MFA faculty member, her accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Blaeser lives in rural Wisconsin and, for portions of each year, in a water-access cabin near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Her book, Ancient Light, is forthcoming from University of Arizona Press in 2024. Additional information here: http://kblaeser.org

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2022