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Two weeks later I will still be thinking about your mouth
You are talking Dionysus
All new moon pupils and Pop Rocks dissolving snap-cracking
on the shelf mushroom of your stuck-out tongue
Wetopen mouthed and dry leaf crunching
Your kitchen is transfigured, is wild rice soup and Lil Nas X
Your porch, a portal, re-applying lipstick
between each press to cigarette filters, to skin,
to handcheekforeheadjaw, to make sure you leave marks
You leave marks
Eyes fae-bright
Fingertips autumn-chill-numb-clutching
And you keep dragging fallen branches in through the front door
scraping up the polish on the floorboards
You are talking about the stars again
About divine beings again
Every blink, every lunar eclipse
And howah, it’s a one-shot, bullseye, K.O.
With your teeth on my neck
I don’t think your gods call these things “trickster”
But there’s some shape-shifting mischief running its fingers
along the rims of our glasses tonight
Circles that hummmm
after sundown
Bawaajigan
I dreamt, once, that I took a breath
and inside of me
seedlings
began to grow
In this dream, I reached up
and a Milky Way of light
arced
along the curves
of my expanding and contracting ribs
In this dream, I reached up
and an algae film of borealis licked
along the webbing between my fingers
when I dipped my hands into
the marsh waters
of the sky
In this dream, I reached down
and roots
grew
from fingertips I pressed
below pine needles and
decomposing leaves
In this dream, I reached down
and long-buried stones
told me stories
about flood water and muskrat gifts
and how beings might go about
growing the world
anew
Before I woke, I heard the sound
of someone
speaking in my voice
I dreamt that I took a breath
and tiny things seeking
medicine pouches
in which to be carried
prayed I might have insides
of cattail down,
of sphagnum moss,
and that I may also be as
a chickadee in winter,
even so
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Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) has been an active member of Chicago’s thriving poetry scene for some 30 years, and was just named as the sixth Illinois Poet Laureate. He is the author of four collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. His poetry and prose have appeared in national and international journals and magazines, and are included in the first-ever Norton Anthology of Native Nations poetry. The PoetryUnbound podcast, hosted by Pådraig Ó Tuama, recently featured his prose-poem, “Dear New Blood.” He served as 2008-09 Visiting Native Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and has since been teaching in the English Department at DePaul University, where he is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence.
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Zoë Johnson is a queer nonbinary Indigenous writer born and living in mid-Michigan and an enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. They received their MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Twice shortlisted for PRISM International’s Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, their poetry and prose has been published in Eastern Iowa Review, beestung, bilingually in The Polyglot, and more, as well as been anthologized in Lascaux Prize Vol. 6, and the Second Edition of “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves” from Oxford University Press.
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Chris Pappan (Kanza, Lakota) b. 1971
Chris Pappan is an enrolled citizen of the Kaw Nation and honors his Osage and Lakota lineage. His art literally reflects the dominant culture’s distorted perceptions of Native peoples and is based on the Plains Native art tradition known as Ledger Art. A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and a nationally recognized painter and ledger artist, Chris’s work is in numerous museums such as the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington DC), the Tia collection (Santa Fe, New Mexico), and the Speed Museum of Art (Louisville, Kentucky) among many others. Chris is currently a board member and co-founder of the Center for Native Futures, a Native American gallery and studio space in downtown Chicago. He lives and works in Chicago with his wife, Debra Yepa-Pappan, and their daughter, Ji Hae.
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