13 Cimi
White Cosmic World-Bridger
The Work of Love
Unties the (K)nots
Which smother us
And choke –
The Work of Love
Cuts the Dust
From past Mistakes -
Erases Pain prolonged
The Work of Love
Clears the Sphere
Of Shame and Blame
Allowing sweet Forgiveness
The Work of Love
Perfects the Soul
Exposing Shadow
To heal and render whole.
©Kleomichele Leeds
Margo Tamez
Margo Tamez (born 28 January 1962 in Austin, Texas, United States) is a Lipan Apache author of the Hada'didla Nde' (“Lightning Storm People”), Konitsaii Nde' (“Big Water People”). She is an enrolled citizen of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas.
A scholar, poet, and Indigenous rights defender, Tamez grew up in unceded Lipan Apache territory in South Texas, the Lower Rio Grande Valley and along the Texas-Mexico border.
Tamez's 2007 work, Raven Eye, is considered the first Apache-authored literary work which 'indigenized' the American poetry form known as the 'long poem', a form developed by Norman Dubie. In Raven Eye, Tamez drew from Athabaskan and Nahua creation stories, oral tradition, and Lipan Apache genocide narratives in combination with autobiography. Raven Eye connected the Lipan Apache oral narrative structure from the Lower Rio Grande valley and southern Texas to a literary aesthetic form that included pictorial writing and history of resistance. Her poetry is best known for stark, detailed examinations of gender violence, identity, non-recognition, genocide and spaces of abjection (walls, the camp, death march, exile). Her prose reflects the critical views of processes and on-going effects of fragmentation, historical erasure, and dispossession on Indigenous peoples, making crucial links between history and present forces (colonization, militarization) impacting Indigenous self-determination in regions bifurcated by settler nation borders where those who remained in traditional places were largely ignored by the state.
Selected bibliography
Poetry and criticism
Naked Wanting (University of Arizona Press, 2003).
Raven Eye (University of Arizona Press, 2007).
"Open Letter to Cameron County Commission," 2 Crit 110 (2009).
"My Mother in Her Being--Photograph ca. 1947," Callaloo, Vol. 32, No. 1, Winter 2009, pp. 185–187.
"Restoring Lipan Apache Women's Laws, Lands and Strength in El Calaboz Rancheria at the Texas-Mexico Border," Signs, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2010, pp. 558–569.
"Our Way of Life is Our Resistance": Indigenous Women and Anti-Imperialist Challenges to Militarization along the U.S.-Mexico Border," Works and Days, Invisible Battlegrounds: Feminist Resistance in the Global Age of War and Imperialism, Susan Comfort, Editor, 57/58: Vol. 20, 2011.
Anthologies
Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems Inspired by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Sister Nations, Heid Erdrich and Laura Tohe (Editors), New Rivers Press.
Stories from Where We Live: The Gulf Coast, Sara St. Antoine (Editor), Milkweed Editions.
Southwestern Women: New Voices, Caitlin L. Gannon (Editor), Javelina Pr.*
CIMI
Kin 26: White Cosmic World-Bridger
I endure in order to equalize
Transcending opportunity
I seal the store of death
with the cosmic tone of presence
I am guided by the power of heart.
Stand up and go to the highest place - the place that everyone knows exists.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Visshudha Chakra (Alpha Plasma)
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