kée píi’nekeyneks: Let us (swallow) take each other in.

We shall be                        lit by a morning

like music: I step                                 
into a field & here is where           
it happened           
another boy
held                        dragged by the cock
& his mother
was only just beginning

to sleep to a silence that night
made from a wind  
leaving      
a chime she never began

to consider. A cricket
out in the yard
in the open dark
mouth now closing
from the emptied weight
                                                of stars.
Or moonlight.
na’qalác says we always were
 devastated.
He also says
yet we are still              so blessed to be

a wreckage of the most terrible monster.

Think: how that body burned              
from the inside out
its torn limbs
glossy bones & bruises began
to build
these very shadows. 

     

Michael Wasson

Michael Wasson's poems appear in American Poets, Narrative, Denver Quarterly, Passages North, and Bettering American Poetry. He is nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation and lives abroad.

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