Author: Duane Poncy

Duane Poncy is a lifelong political, social and literary activist. He lives and writes fiction in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife, Patricia. His latest novel is Skyrmion: Book One of the Sweetland Quartet. He is also the co-author, with Patricia J McLean, of Bartlett House, A Will Adelhardt/Lucy Hidalgo Mystery, and the forthcoming Ghosts of Saint-Pierre. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Find me on Mastodon: @duanep@writing.exchange.

Degrees of Freedom, book two of The Sweetland Quartet

Something is strange about the new world the immigrants call Sweetland. Particularly for the adults, who suffer from a plague of depression and forgetting they’ve named the Saudadés, a disease which is leading to a high rate of suicide. Why are the flora and fauna so familiar, so like the plant and animal life left behind on Earth? And why are they all so afraid of the forest? For the native born children, who call themselves the Borns, the forest is their friend and companion. But they too notice the changes which happen sometimes right before their eyes. Sixteen-year-old Molly Whitedeer and her friends believe it has to do with the DNA of the forest, and the rhizome-like roots which seem to connect all of the living plants on the planet the children call Torzucán. When the New America Corporation invades the Communities, Molly must flee to Lake Adan’dohi with…

On the Jolly boat

Thought I’d share an illustration I made for Adventures of Yvonne, which a children’s story inside of our novel, Ghosts of Saint Pierre. Yvonne is the little girl seated in the center of the boat, between her mother and her brother, Andre. They are on their way to board the Liberté, a pirate ship on which Maman has hired on as a galley cook with the captain, Marie Le Méchant.

Tsalagi Poems

I have posted a few of my Cherokee poems. I may post some short stories and excerpts later. the long man grandfather, the Long Man, came down from the hills to the green valleys of the Smokey Mountains, where grandmother sent her love in the four directions, giving life to our mother Selu, and our father Kanati, and the cedar tree and the strawberry, the swiftly running deer, the hare in the underbrush, the tiny thrush with throbbing heart. beside the river I married the white-skinned stranger, and he lived with me in my mother’s house, and we bathed each morning in the icy waters and said our prayers to the spirit of creation, counting our sorrows on dogwood blossoms until the soldiers came with their guns, and forced us to leave the old man behind. I no longer say my prayers to the Long Man. my children speak the…

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The Sky Path

They say that life may have come to the Earth on a meteor kicked up from the Martian plains by some asteroid gone astray, or it might be the byproduct of star factories, churning out chiral molecules in interstellar space, to seed far flung worlds. If so, then where is my home? And who among us lay rightful claim here, if only the rocks are indigenous? And is this why my ancestors believed that we all return to the stars to dance in the sky at the end of life? © 2012, Duane Poncy