Posts for June 11, 2025 (page 5)

I love the charm of the barn at the peak of a hill,
undulating on the horse farm,
and I love the sunset, an afternoon trek
where I can collect my thoughts before the fireflies fluoresce.

Sorry, I can’t come.

Sorry, I don’t have time.

Sorry, I just couldn’t.

Not I won’t be there or I hope you have fun.

My capacity is limited, but I will send a gift.

I am overwhelmed.

Not no, but a quiet folding inward,

an RSVP wrapped in guilt.

We don’t say:

I haven’t felt like myself in weeks.

I watched the invitation glow on my screen

and couldn’t move.

We don’t say:

I am tired of being strong

or polite

or fine.

We say sorry —

a word that fits any pocket,

a word so soft

it hides everything inside it.

Sorry, I missed it.

Sorry, I meant to.

Sorry, let’s catch up.

It’s the sorry we have in common.

Not always regret,

but recognition

that we are each

a little frayed

and trying.

As I wander down the grassy slope in the dark, stepping into the arc of your flashlight

Inspired, in part, by: Clinton Duncan Too-Quah-stee,
“he raised his voice to the last in opposition to the destruction of his nation and, after the fact, lamented its passing and attempted to prick America’s conscience.”

Before a trip to the local bowling alley
In Tualatin to meet with a colleague
I notice the town’s
enclaves and parks
I look up the town’s name
One source says 
“Tualatin, is an unidentified, abstracted “Indian word” 
translating to anything
from lazy to sluggish
to a treeless plain
to (river) forks
to the name
of the local Kalapuya band, the Atfalati.”

Standing on a street corner, I look up and see
“Sioux Court” in white letters outlined in green
embellished with the town’s,  vaguely
tribal-inspired T logo
I see Apache Drive. Cheyenne Way. Iroquois Drive. Piute Court. Chinook Street.
All bunched together
All out of context
All the same
neatly organized Indian names
Just like in the neighborhoods
Clairemont Mesa, California
Ahwatukee, Arizona
Just like Cherokee Village, Arkansas
Just like Medford Lakes, New Jersey
And so on
And so on
All of these towns have a Cheyenne Avenue, Drive, Trail, or Way
They all have Sioux and Iroquois, Apache, Chinook, and Piute/Paiute
Three of those host streets are named Tonto
Either referencing the so-called Tonto Apache
or the most famous fictional Indian of all

At least that fiction would be honest, up front

As early as 1900
American city planners
abstracted street names
using Indian themes
like these
neighborhoods changed the names of numbered streets
Twenty-Seventh, Twenty-Ninth, Thirtieth, Thirty-Third, and Thirty-Fifth
to Shawnee, Navajo, Seminole, Huron, and Cherokee
when they were built
They were undeniably white spaces
They largely remain so

White space. Indian symbols

a mode
by which Americans could use
Native ghosts
to narrate
landscape
Symbols of the Indian
to craft attractive
new domestic spaces
places for American inhabitation
Somehow, actual Native people
never figured into the conversation
Builders clearly understood
Indian themes were marketable
to white Americans
They indirectly referenced nature
They offered romantic mythologies
They were “native” to the land of this nation
They were original
They conferred history and tradition
to newly made spaces that had neither

we continually forget
We feign wakefulness
(if we wake at all)
then forget again
Beyond parks and street names
we turn
away from decolonizing
away from confronting racism
and away from tempering

unchecked individualism

maybe the first step:
continually
recognize Native land
Say the words
Believe them
Listen to what we have already been told

Then we can better understand
How to return. 

Found poem From: Natchee Blu Barnd, A Lot to Ask Of A Name: White Spaces and Indian Symbols, Oregon Humanities, August 30 2018
https://www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine/turn/a-lot-to-ask-of-a-name/

DeWitt Clinton Duncan Too-Quah-Stee, ” The Too Quah Stee Collection”, American Native Press Archives and Sequoyah Research Center, 
https://ualrexhibits.org/tribalwriters/artifacts/Too-Qua-Stee-Collection.html

This morning, I pull up a canvas from a second-hand store,
a clown with sad face. It takes four coats

of white acrylic to overturn the stark, dark face.
I place it on an easel on the stone patio,

posed to capture the June Strawberry Moon,
but grey clouds get in my way. Such is this year.

Clouds everywhere. But I have yet to see rainbows,
so overcast the sky after each rain. I decide to dig

deep into my imagination to remember a free rainbow
and dip into violet, indigo, blue— my hand glides

higher with each hue to brush on green, yellow, orange
and red. Once dry, inside the orange, I paint a protest.

A love letter.

Calm demeanor

a strawberry moon will rise
on this, a long sun lit Wednesday
I celebrate, not just the lunar manifestation
my daughter’s birthday, as well
June at its finest
brings forth sunshine
even after darkness falls

It’s the hottest today,

Of what it has been all year,

And I’m going to soak up the sun.

Imagining the sun is you,

of course.

I want to lay in the heat

And let every beam of you

Kiss my skin.

I have to absorb every inch—

Past the skin, through the bone, and into the blood.

I need to feel the rays

Ignite every part of me,

Skin glowing, heart pounding

Sweat dripping, hot to the touch

Never burnt, always perfectly golden.

I’ll lay here,

Roasting in the heat,

Giggling at the tanline on my cheek

In the shape of your smile.