Leslie Marmon Silko
~Poetry Selection~
It Was a Long Time Before
It was a long time before
I learned that my Grandma A'mooh's
real name was Marie Anaya Marmon.
I thought her name really was "A'mooh."
I realize now it had happened when I was a baby
and she cared for me while my mother worked.
I had been hearing her say
which is the Laguna expression of endearment
for a young child
spoken with great feeling and love.
Her house was next to ours
and as I grew up
I spent a lot of time with her
because she was in her eighties
and they worried about her falling.
So I would go check up on her--which was really
an excuse to visit her.
After I had to go to school
I went to carry in the coal bucket
which she still insisted on filling.
I slept with her
in case she fell getting up in the night.
She still washed her hair with yucca roots
or "soap weed" as she called it. She said
it kept white hair like hers from yellowing.
She kept these yucca roots on her windowsill
and I remember I was afraid of them for a long time
because they looked like hairy twisted claws.
I watched her make red chili on the grinding stone
the old way, even though it had gotten difficult for her
to get down on her knees.
She used to tell me and my sisters
about the old days when they didn't have toothpaste
and cleaned their teeth with juniper ash,
and how, instead of corn flakes, in the old days they ate
"maaht'zini" crushed up with milk poured over it.
Her last years they took her away to Alburquerque
to live with her daughter, Aunt Bessie.
But there was no fire to start in the morning
and nobody dropping by.
She didn't have anyone to talk to all day
because Bessie worked.
She might have lived without watering morning glories
and without kids running through her kitchen
but she did not last long
without someone to talk to.
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In Cold Storm Light
In cold storm light
I watch the sandrock
canyon rim.
The wind is wet
The wind is cold
with the sound of juniper.
And then
out of the thick ice sky
running swiftly
pounding
swirling above the treetops
The snow elk come,
Moving, moving
white song
storm wind inthe branches.
And when the elk have passed
behind them
a crystal train of snowflakes
strands of mist
tangled in rocks
and leaves.
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Toe'osh: A Laguna Coyote Story
In the wintertime
at night
we tell coyote stories
and drink Spanada by the stove.
How coyote got his
ratty old fur coat
bits of old fur
the sprrows stuck on him
with dabs of pitch.
That was after he lost his proud original one in a poker game.
anyhow, things like that
are always happening to him,
that's what he said, anyway.
And it happened to him at Laguna
and Chinle
and Lukachukai too, because coyote got too smart for his own good.
But the Navajos say he won a contest once.
It was to see who could sleep out in a
snowstorm the longest
and coyote waited until chipmunk badger and skunk were all
curled up under the snow
and then he uncovered himself and slept all night
inside
and before morning he got up and went out again
and waitied until the others got up before he came
in to take the prize.
Some white men came to Acoma and Laguna a hundred years ago
and they fought over Acoma land and Laguna women, and even now
some of their descendants are howling in
the hills southeast of Laguna.
Charlie Coyote wanted to be governor
and he said that when he got elected
he would run the other men off
the reservation
and keep all the women for himself.
One year
the politicians got fancy
at Laguna.
They went door to door with hams and turkeys
and they gave them to anyone who promised
to vote for them.
On election day all the people
stayed home and ate turkey
and laughed.
The Trans-Western pipeline vice president came
to discuss right-of-way.
The Lagunas let him wait all day long
because he is a busy and important man.
And late in the afternoon they told him
to come back again tomorrow.
They were after the picnic food
that the special dancers left
down below the cliff.
And Toe'osh and his cousins hung themselves
down over the cliff
holding each other's tail in their mouth making a coyote chain
until someone in the middle farted
and the guy behind him opened his
mouth to say "What stinks?" and they
all went tumbling down, like that.
Howling and roaring
Toe'osh scattered white people
out of bars all over Wisconsin.
He bumped into them at the door
until they said
And the way Simon meant it
was for 300 or maybe 400 years.
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