’ilakáw’ispa [Land of Brightness Mentioned in a Traditional Death Song]
Michael Wasson
Now I’m barefoot
in the driveway
shirtless in overalls
rolled cuffs my shy
hands buried away
my brother’s back
inside stacking Lincoln Logs
like a reservation
cathedral four walls
bombed out
the ruin still in his
hands a grey light bulb
staring at the back
of his head
mom checks
another fresh letter
lectricity’s fuckin out again
& she’s behind
that unlit window
where a long veined crack
splits her along
her wilted dark
cheekbone just missing
her tensed mouth
✼
I
Brother
Mom
this only family of ours
these clothes of wetted gravel an arm
of dusked sun
a leg of calmed pine an opened body of field
a skull cleared of daylight
our hair of fallen leaves our dark backs
of river wash
a blinking eyelid of sap
our skin of dying grass
all of us
husked & humming
✼
this reservation of
cá’ya payóopayoo
no songbirds not even
the hummingbird
drinking the red sweet
Kool-Aid from our lips
& there it is a robin
k’áw’ k’áw’
pecking worms
out of the still earth
below our naked
headless aspen.
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