Layli Long Soldier, Oglala Lakota.
Talent
my first try I made a hit it dropped from morning grey the smallest shadow both wings slipped inward mid-flight the man barked Now I shot again and again a third time with each arrow through the target I thought was it luck or was it skill luck or skill as the last one fell
its awkward shape made me run pulsing there on the ground I was astounded by its size a gangly white goose throbbed heaved its head my eyes dropped blood flowers opened in the snow of its neck behind my shoulder stepping down from a yellow bus
children made their way across the field I shot it once more to end it quickly close-range its death did I do this to spare the bird from suffering or to spare the children the sight my motives in humid cold yes my knuckles in the cold steamed bright red
because on my stomach in grass in rubber boots pockets and vest I slid along with that hunter I did as he directed from quiver my draw my black lashes in steely-eyed release it felt good there it felt strong my breath in autumn was an animal there I thought did I really do this did I really yet what difference is muscle is an arrow powered upward is any flight to center no I did not hear it though I clearly mouthed poor thing poor thing poor thing
@Layli Long Soldier
www.asusjournal.org
Layli Long Soldier holds a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an M.F.A. from Bard College. She has served as a contributing editor of Drunken Boat. Her poems have appeared in The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review Online, and other publications. She is the recipient of the 2015 NACF National Artist Fellowship and a 2015 Lannan Literary Fellowship. Her collection of poetry, WHEREAS, will be published in 2017. Long Soldier resides in Tsaile, Arizona, where she is an English faculty member at Diné College.
Citation
Layli Long Soldier is the poet-architect in the arena of witness and longing. Her work interrogates poetic form and the legacy of a history of brutality and extermination. Her collection, WHEREAS, continually asks questions of both the reader and the author as Long Soldier considers the way Native American identity can be expressed on the page—what language should be used, what rules should be followed? What does authenticity or authorship mean when so much of one culture has been wiped out by another? Elegant and painful, formally surprising, personal and historic, this is a fearless, polyphonic crossing of cultures and languages in the service of both tenderness and trenchant critique.
www.theparisreview.org
MANIK
I dedicate in order to know
Universalizing healing
I seal the store of accomplishment
With the crystal tone of cooperation
I am guided by the power of self-generation.
To master the energy system, sensitivity should be developed in the psycho-sensory system, so you are able to perceive both what is apparent and what is not apparent.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2015-2016.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Svadhistana Chakra (Kali Plasma)
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