On He Mni Caƞ, and: All Water Desires to Return to the Ocean, and: Indian Summer

On He Mni Caƞ, and: All Water Desires to Return to the Ocean, and: Indian Summer Halee Kirkwood (bio) On He Mni Caƞ At the trailhead, educational monuments, recordings playedin Dahkota language testifying the bluff's history—medicineand prayer scarred by limestone quarry.Driftless, there was no barrier between us andthe speedboat-churned Mississippi, metallicbelow—planted, an American flag, yarrow andhyssop, a couple's twenty eighth anniversary,their panting Yorkipoo. Your muscles burnedwith lactic acid, you feared twisted ankles. Andtrue, with every careless step, bluff crumbled.Dahkota had hid here from my people whowere both sides of theocean, Swedish immigrants, expanding Ojibwe.I was wanted, I was not wanted, I wanteda lyric moment, my Indian stereotype cliche, aplace I swear I've dreamed of, holding hands, eyes pried open to yellow thunder swept acrossthe valley. End Page 94 All Water Desires to Return to the Ocean —After CAConrad Piss does sweat the fluid enveloping my bipolar brain the spit cleared out of a trumpet's trough a jazz an ache catch and releaseaspirants soaring when the choir sings later poured into an Evian bottle Mississippi Flint Water Wars flooding in Afghanistan flooding in Germanypresumed vengeance rampage relief thirst absolution one part biology one part trauma a gurgle a trickle erosion body the delta of destiny The ocean is never far when you feel your pulseMy blood My needsame as yours same as bears with mouths full End Page 95 of the glistening salmon who have been boiling whose creek melody is rerouted and what does it taste like to drink a song contained an aria of lead pipes maples sucked of color by drought through a straw the unregulated tap water used to swallow my Lamictal suspicious to the tongue a sparrow's dirt bath crane shy in cattails sell myself back to myself rain no longer safe to drink End Page 96 Indian Summer I'd like to know the origins of the term Indian Summer,so I can place the Octobers spent marveling at Indian Corn on my white grandmother's country porch, ladybugsbejeweling my mother's Indian Hands. I have Indian Hair, my white cousins say. They balk at the photo of an Alcatraz wallspray-painted You Are On Indian Land! because, they say, we aren't supposed to call you that anymore. What I've heard; Native-Indian, Indigenous-Native, American-Native-Indian, Indian NativeIndigenous American— I'm asked by a white customer at my bookish Indian Job:"where can I find an urn for my husband's Native-Indian step-uncle?" An elder on the Ojibwe Language Facebook page jokes"They called us Chippewas because we chipped-away at the fur trader's canoes." My mother taught me that a word's power lies most with how you say it & asis my Indian Way I scroll for answers with blueberry-stained fingertips. Some say the term comes from the idea of running on Indian Time,that final summer stretch coming in late. Others say it comes from settlers misunderstanding the golden shafts oflate-light for Indian Burns in the distance, campfires or prairie fires, that an Authentic Indian Summer must come with haze liftingoff the first killing frost. Still, I am most compelled by this query: who put the Indian in Indian Summer? As if, in another life, we weren't discovered to death & insteadfound ourselves divinely plopped upon wooden porches on a seventy four degree day, sunflowers resurrectedto face one more warm Indian Morning. End Page 97 Halee Kirkwood halee kirkwood is a 2023–2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumni, and an Indigenous Nations Poets (INNA-PO) fellow. They were awarded the 2022 James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. Kirkwood's work can be found in Poetry Magazine, Ecotone, Gulf Coast, and others. Kirkwood is a direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. Copyright © 2024 University of North Dakota