Presence: The Heartspeak of Indigenous Poets: Millissa Kingbird
This country carries a heavy history of words weaponized in so many unspeakable ways. We must face these times of worry and fear with all of our strength and ancestral power. Storytelling and bearing witness through art is a communal tool for survival. These continue to be times where we need poetry the most. And so, we come together to share experience, songs, stanzas, and phrases to invoke resilience and grit to challenge obstacles and embrace the humanity of Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants.
In honor of Native American Heritage Month I would like to celebrate and uplift several Indigenous writers whose words inspire us to continue to share our voices and our truths.
We are still here, I type these words while sitting on Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho lands. We are still here, fingers on keys. We are still here, voice in throat. We are still here, blood in memory, we remember. We are still here, we re-member ourselves into survivance. The presence of these poets’ pulses through the literary landscape to help us survive our loneliness and silences, to bless us with light, and to bear witness to our presence in all forms.
– Tanaya Winder
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How to Speak
Spit the violent hands thrown
carve with the cup of the tongue,
smooth thumb down
heart mortuary cold.
A lean-to /
snare tucked into the fault line of prey.
Who writes about fistfights?
Nobody even calls them that
un-gentle, bloody final.
You’re mink sleek,
fresh skinned, and hung bloody.
Throw hands—
Imagine clumps of fingers flying glossy red
beaten face of your enemy
every beat language,
every one enemy.
There a list of names you called family.
You don’t see them now
just fangs
bare wild points.