In anticipation of Tupelo Press’s forthcoming anthology project, Native Voices, I’m pleased to continue a series of posts honoring Indigenous poetry from North America.
But first, I’d like to say a few words about this exciting and necessary anthology. Tupelo Press is eager to celebrate a more complete version of the story we tell—about ourselves, our past, and what is possible in language. In this book, the first of its kind, every poet will present new poems, as well as an original essay, and a selection of resonant work chosen from previous generations of Native artists. Our anthology is intended to embody the dynamic and ongoing conversations that take place in Indigenous poetry through writerly craft across generational, geographic, and stylistic divides.
With that in mind, it is an honor and a delight to introduce one of our poets, Sammie Bordeaux-Seeger. Sammie Bordeaux-Seeger is a Sicangu Lakota from Rosebud, South Dakota. She writes and teaches at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation. Here is a poem forthcoming in the anthology, entitled "1900." Enjoy!
1900
Great grandma as a little girl holds the quilt in which she is buried.
They had only had fabric for dresses and quilts a few years at that point,
only ten years past the ‘Knee.
Little girls knew then any wildness could be punished with bullets,
the way we knew fear of spanking or The Big Owl,
who would come and take us in our sleep
to the top of the water tower, shove us off.
Grandma warned us every night before bed,
The Big Owl is going to come and take your bottles.
And five year old me would come home from Headstart,
make a double batch of chocolate milk for my little brother
in the cheap plastic bottles. Screw on the tops,
put ourselves down for a nap.
In 1900 there was only the breast, the milk,
the dead mother the child slipped next to for suckle.
That sigh.
For more information about the anthology, our mission, and how you can help, please visit our Kickstarter page.
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