Category: Essays

Signal

Two long skinny rows of cars one going west, one east push the air, it folds, tires swish. I’m exposed on two wheels, I feel the air. We wait for the light to change your arm hangs out the window and I watch you drop a little piece of something you held, covertly, as if to hide it from the driver or anyone who might be watching as if I were undercover, a bicycle cop, and the fine for littering, suddenly enforced, might be a price too much to pay, but the risk is one you’ll take, carefully. Why should this bit, this small strip of purple nothing flutter to the street instead of to the floor at your feet? What bird will find something other than death by eating it? The purple bit will fade in the sun, be run over again and again. Blow to the curb, be…

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

Indigenousness

Writing Native America

As preparation for a presentation at the Eastern Oregon Word Roundup at Pendleton in late October, I am writing a series of essays about “Writing Native America” dealing with indigenousness, identity, and literary authenticity, the latter from the perspective of a publisher.

As those who have followed my earlier essays may know, my personal approach is strongly informed my the idea of “Creolism” as put forward by the Martinique philosopher, Edouard Glissant, as well as my own metis identity. I am hoping these articles will become a source of information for authors, especially those who might consider submitting works to our press. This first article consists of a slightly revised version on an essay I wrote several years ago, entitled “On Becoming Indigenous.”

The essay follows:…

Bless You?

I think we should be mindful with language, to know what we are saying before we speak. Everybody knows that words are more powerful than sticks and stones despite the schoolyard litany to the contrary. Bones mend, and if you think that words cannot kill you, then the lessons of history have been lost on […]…