National Poetry Month Day 10: Jake Skeets

 

 

 

Eating Wild Carrots with My Brothers on the Mesa

 

cicada wane
            water and sun race every infinite evening
fall exists for the dock root to oxalate
                        each roof of every mouth
            each winter with its obsessed wind
each spring that sees storm after storm

                                   each wild that wilds
pasqueflowers opening palms to straight rain

 

***

Photograph of Jake Skeets by Quanah Yazzie.

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Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born for Water’s Edge. He is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico. He is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, a National Poetry Series-winning collection of poems. He holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Skeets is a winner of the 2018 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Skeets edits an online publication called Cloudthroat and organizes a poetry salon and reading series called Pollentongue, based in the Southwest. He is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: A Diné Writers’ Collective and currently teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona.

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