Rain Scald: Poems
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About this ebook
In this innovative debut collection, Tacey M. Atsitty employs traditional, lyric, and experimental verse to create an intricate landscape she invites readers to explore. Presented in three sections, Tséyi’, Gorge Dweller, and Tóhee’, the poems negotiate between belief and doubt, self and family, and interior and exterior landscapes.
Tacey M. Atsitty
Tacey M. Atsitty is the author of the chapbook Amenorrhea. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Atsitty is Diné of the Sleep Rock People, born for the Tangle People.
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Rain Scald - Tacey M. Atsitty
TSÉYI’ Deep in the Rock
Snake White, Owl White
When I say my cheek fell,
I mean bone, gliding
pell, sunken. I mean it hides
in rain, in a sky-lit cell, swelling.
This is me fallen together,
separated from her: a mistelling
of Female Warrior Who Split
in Two, who pulled from her gut-well
a lumpy snake, pale with a scaling tongue.
Word-slit. I’ve heaved her pang, her yell
at the snap of his tail. They drop
into words at the end, a quell
to the flood line of a uvula,
face, cheek pouch—high shell
veins. Birds swim silver
in sky. An owl drops to dwell
with me. Gapes. It’s death.
I step back. I can’t tell
how he rises and dives at me, then turns
flight just before my head. When I tell you,
this is where bone rises to white,
I mean tomorrow, a minute later, dive well.
Ach’íí’
I
In my pocket: intestines
wrap fat, and it’s so stiff
when cold. It looks like—
we shouldn’t speak,
so young. Instead, knead salt,
flour, and water.
Our toys, I’ve tasted them:
sheepherders or soldiers.
Should they harden
and be painted, or should
a hole be blown from the insides.
All that salt.
II
Dad’s baby brother, his intestines
broke, and he couldn’t pee.
He died because he was so full.
Just like his grandmother,
the day she walked out of the hogan,
dropped to her knees, holding her
stomach—so mixed up inside
when it exploded.
III
After all those explosions in Vietnam, it must’ve messed my uncle up pretty good. He could never eat ach’íí’ again. He had to have three Enemy Ways done. We had to haul so many sheep. It’s a long ride in the back of a jeep all the way to Farmington to be baptized. I stood next to that wall of bricks at the Apache building, wearing my squash blossom: a line of females v’ing down to the male, and there rested his tongue, almost between my breasts.
IV
I remember She Who Wasn’t Spoken Of—
each Red Vine costed a nickel, that easy twine
across the street from our little red-bricked
house—They say she drove so fast
she whorled into a puff of