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2.1.aâquestions and answers
Q: kÎkwây ôma
what is this
a leak in memory
a love story that doesnât travel all the way to the end
his forehead against a bus window
his hand between his thighs
he stood cutting onions, tucking his fingers in
when nohtâwiy messaged back
he sat on the wooden bleachers with me
overlooking the public pool and that strange baby-blue stage
where a group of parents danced to a bluetooth speaker
he told me particles in the air make for good sunsets
held my loss between his shoulder blades
a leak in memory
a love story that doesnât travel all the way to the end
what are endingsâtho
but another way to know time
to place in the centre of our learningâa hand of minutes
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A: maskosiy anima
that is a blade of grass
a sharp stagger across memory
my first time
at a party hot-boxing a bathroom
socked feet in the centre of the tub
i am a pack of matches
waiting for the friction of light
how do our legs look
dressed in smoke
do we stay young
when we leave
we leave outlines of our bodies on the wall
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Q: maskasiy cĂŽ awa
is this a fingernail
in the mouth of memory
pulled apart like the insides of a clock
undoing hours
a bundle of wâpanĂŞwaskâunfurls
NDN time stretches grassland over a watch and is never late
i scrub my hands
and the pieces of a story wash up on the bank
i lost my lover and nohtâwiy in the same month
pull missing
hair from my head
in the mirrorâi watch time drip
into a lakeâinto a love letterâinto a poem
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Possible Answers:
namĂ´ya, maskosiy anima
no, that is a blade of grass
at a party hot-boxing a bathroom
namĂ´ya, maskasiy ana
no, that is a fingernail
in the mouth of memory
namĂ´ya, maskasiy ana,
no, that is a fingernail,
maskosiy anima.
that is a blade of grass.
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email drafts to nohtâwiy
i call you by your first name.
you and i, like aspen talking to each other underground. messages threading through roots that run beyond us. the summers we visited are an elastic stretched between time, holding keys and junk-drawer magnets together. in this version of events, we arenât just poems.
iâll admit, iâve been afraid to write. so here is my deflection, for everyone to read.
this summer, my roommate nadia got caught in a storm. hair gelled with so much glitter it beamed across her eyebrows like wet stars. one night near the apartment, a boy offered me a piggyback ride, told me my crutche...
