Rain Scald

Poems

Tacey M. Atsitty

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780826358677
• eBook ISBN: 9780826358684
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In this innovative debut collection, Tacey M. Atsitty employs traditional, lyric, and experimental verse to create an intricate landscape she invites readers to explore. Presented in three sections, Tséyi', Gorge Dweller, and Tóhee', the poems negotiate between belief and doubt, self and family, and interior and exterior landscapes.

TÓHEE’ Extinct Navajo ceremony
used for calling rain, healing paralysis,
resuscitating from drowning and deafness,
and handling dreams

In Strips

I
fingertip knead this rickrack struggle in the spread crosswire threads muscle like crevice nose of mountain	neck, stitch issue line by blossom wrap, sat on warp-and-weft effect bless, us up-stitch collar, yeah	sentence tear rest on fault my wrist, the roundup when we gather song, yeah or ugly
II
bark, take care or or or or wrinkle or smear nickels settle into letters word at the bottom zhiins, over the	language we use beyond that rub flower into clavicle clip them these are elbows like stars, skin	push it around gather the hip or compass pick moments— break rickrack says, either page quilt, look up
III
let me respond, stick private as armpit where the skin of land keeps know there’s infant lava rock is not lava leap in all forehead, nose	out our ribs: I am sorry, say gathers, let me in our strife within the rocks rock, but blood— fury, from ridge chin to breasts	tiering course that again, sip swing, storytell pass by pass within the guts know of monsters to fall, water trace tummy to knees
IV
but this, this stress on the fold bark of wrinkle and piecing hills to sky, land like mountain sack	is not a mountain is not a gorge, align what binds the raw of built up or collapse altogether, words gone with the grain	is seam rip seam is walls in back stitch edge, the sashing of create, appliqué like clouds, sentence in strides of bark

At Evil Canyon

Where I’m going there is no water:

where rain thins into streaks of hair,

beneath bangs, at the right cheek,

looking at me bowl faced. Like molars

tucked in the back of a mouth.

Four masks in a row, marked bare

by posts, sun-blanked board, fallen.

A woman comes to me, “Do they sing?

How did this wall tilt? Which infant

pushed off, stomped the cracks

of this face?” Hand-hand and hand-hand

tell me a saliva sojourn, all along the wall.

Bow my head to light, heat reflect.

Here shark head emerges from canyon

waves; scale them. And with finger

shadows pluck ants from the ground.

“If you’ve never seen them, you’ll never see

them (faces nor hands),” she said. “As a girl

I searched these walls but never found them.

Here, where rocks rise like gnarled fingers.”

To know your hands is to dip them

into lake clouds, a rock-deep cool.

Leaping Ridge

The Crescent tells of a night that once poured

pale tiles out of the sky. A pail tilt—

whoosh! Night blooms from Spanish Dagger, sores

of water in ash. There is no smoke spilt

or stitches along fi bers: land to blue.

Wall where water carves a tear, a wilted

pluck or flower canal. Gourd-full spew

at the tongue. Watch how a sheer quilt

freezes in patch, in dune. Smother. Rockfold

once cradled a mother in the hilt,

dipped her in descent. Yucca curl. Last gawk

went in search of her back, where after the jolt,

her infant swayed: at every crumble of limb and mud,

such a small thud, thud, thud.

Monster Who Kicks People Down the Cliff

He tells me his mother once rode a mare to death, that when he was a child, she’d kick him in the pants and he’d plummet to the canyon floor, talking to his relatives along the way. But tonight the sky emits a loneliness only a monster could know, and so he told me how he came to be this way. In a vale of cottonwoods, he starts. My mother would sit near a river, bending her back for stones that looked like half of me. Soon thereafter, I settled like a rock inside her belly as she rode bareback along the river. Maybe it was the weight of me, but soon she regretted how she waited for the sun to warm cliffs, regretted my father seeing her longing—I’ve seen her clamber and wail when she went off to be with canyon walls! Later, she’d rock me to sl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tséyi’
• Gorge Dweller
• Tóhee’
• Notes
• Acknowledgments