this accident of being lost
listen for the hesitant beat
sit at the edge of the woods
shape shift around the defense
ban the word should
follow the bluebird
past the smoke & contraband
my frightened lower back
a witness on unkept-promise land
hide under mindimooyenh’s skirt
wrap swamp tea around your chest
fill your empty with smoked meat
vomit this fucking mess
weave spruce into your fix
forget missed shots & mean boys
tie these seven pieces of heart
use whiskey as your decoy
play by the skin of old teeth
the ritual of giving thanks
laughing hearts & feeding fires
compasses & riverbanks
i’m just going to sit here past late
the stars don’t care at what cost
you breathe while i whisper a song
“this accident of being lost”
LEANING IN
Auntie told me to paddle down the river to Chi’Niibish. When I get to the lake, she said to turn west and paddle along the shore until I see the mist of Niagara Falls. As soon as I can see the mist, that’s the spot to lean into the lake and cross. She said that’s how those old Mississauga Nishnaabeg Ashkiwiwininiwag did it, hypnotic hard paddling, drowning out the screams of tired arms and aching shoulders, keeping the mist in sight, in the corner of their right eyes.
Now I’m sitting on the shore of the lake, thinking about you, at the spot where I’m supposed to be turning and crossing. I always forget how big the lake is. I always forget how blue the lake is, the clean wind picking up drops so I can breathe them in. I’m imagining you’re here and we’re talking about you and me and us, and things that matter. How we got here. Where we’re going. What’s to be done. My impulse is to push the conversation to somewhere it shouldn’t go, somewhere it doesn’t need to go, and I catch myself. I stay centred. I need to have just one conversation with you so I can write this. I just need to see your movements, your face, your response to the tiny moments of life most never even notice. I need to feel your beautiful boy-spirit rise as you lie down on the cedar boughs, lean in towards the fire and listen to your Kokum’s quiet singing on Zhaawanoog land.
It can’t just be lists of battles, speeches, failed marriages, and betrayals.
We can’t be that different, you and me.
We sit in the same place.
Facing the same thing.
We can both boil it down to a single statement:
“They want all of the land.”
We both see how it ends.
Auntie says we don’t count our dead because it’s like calling them back, so I’m more careful and I say it in a circle: Tkamse, my Taagaamose, it shines across, a burst of light, a tiny explosion in the sky, a crossing over. Tkamse, my Taagaamose, bizhiw gidoodem, my clan brother. Tkamse, my Taagaamose, our Zhaawanoog relative. Tkamse, my beautiful Taagaamose, eniigaanzijig.
This tiny moment: It was Binaakwe Giizis. The light was rich and gold. The leaves had turned and, like you, they were ready to let go. The river was low to the ground and moving cold. You already knew. You gave each of your weapons away: bravery to Ipperwash, honour to Oka, persistence to the Zhaawanoog, clarity to anyone who was willing to see. You stopped breathing the next day and our homelands were erased. You stopped breathing and a million Tkamses were born.
Zhaawan and Niibin were waiting for you at the stopping place near Deshkaan Ziibing. They were waiting so that you were not alone. They were waiting to wrap your bones in warmth the second you no longer had to be the warrior. They built a lodge around you and protected you, like you protected me. They used our sweet, sweet grass to smudge away hurt. They took turns holding you, like you were their child. They sung quiet songs near your earlobes. They massaged your muscles until you could let go and breathe full breaths. They used careful stiches to sew up old wounds. They recorded every word your lips spoke, and they sat with every tear. They waited while you made your final visits. When you were ready, Niibin took your hand, kissed your cheek, and led you to the canoe, which you paddled down the river to the west, crossing back over the sky, into a better world. When they lost sight of you, Niibin gave your bones to those old ones at Bkejwanong, because those ones still knew what to do.
And after you were gone, Zhaawan leaned in and sang the song that says, Thank you for giving me this life.
Miigwech my Tkamse,
we remember.
A FEW GOOD REASONS TO WEAR A LONG SKIRT
you can cut part of your skirt off if you need bandages, hair ties, j cloths, a sling, rope, fishing line, shoe laces, a belt, a sack, kleenex, toilet paper, ear plugs, a hat, a protest sign, a flag, a towel, a trail marker, snares, or dental floss. also, if someone loses their loin cloth, you can whip one up out of your skirt, & still have ample skirt left over.
if you are in a big hurry & you aren’t wearing underwear and you want to have sex with someone, it could save time.
if you want to masturbate, but you are in public, you could use your skirt as a tent.
if you’re on the lake in your canoe & you drop your paddles & you forgot your whistle & it’s too far to reach the paddles, you could use your skirt as a sail to sail to shore.
if you are ice fishing & someone falls in the hole, you could use your skirt as a rescue rope to rescue them.
if some youth of the day steal the canadian flag from the flagpole outside the high school, they could fly your skirt until they buy a new flag.
if you need to attack a fort, you can get everyone together to play a fake a game of lacrosse with the shirts, and then when one of the skins “accidentally” throws the ball into the fort, & they open the gates to get it, you & all your skirted friends can take your knives & axes out from underneath your skirts & attack the fuck out of the british.
(tested and proven to work june 2, 1763, at fort michilimackinac.)
road salt
pacing the side of the highway
waiting for rhythm to break
sweating for one more hit
before i come out as a fake
dawn gets eaten by morning
one lick turns into three
aandeg just sits & surveys
i know she can’t lie to me
road salt makes me twitch
& more comfortable in my skin
aandeg can love without trust
let’s assume that means she’s kin
licking the road is its own humiliation
just like hostages first trap themselves
aandeg’s the bird on a wire
like i’m a deer on nobody’s shelf
this is how to die in a war
they insist doesn’t exist
aandeg never sees the whites of my eyes
unasked questions, unsurveyed cysts
the snow will drown without suffering
the road salt still managing dreadfear
aandeg hacking overhead
until we’re mid-road again next year
dawn gets eaten by morning
one lick turns into three
aandeg just sits & surveys
i know she can’t lie to me
BIG WATER
I’m lying in bed with my legs entangled in Kwe’s. My chest is against the precious thin skin on her back and my arms hold her warm brown. I’m imagining us lying in smoky calm on cedar boughs instead of in this damp on Oakwood Avenue. I wish I could fall asleep like this, with her so close, but I’m too nervous when nice happens; I get more anxious than normal. I’m shallow breathing at her atlas and I’m worrying that my breath is too moist on th
e back of her neck and that it feels gross for her, maybe so gross that it will wake her up. So I roll over and check my phone, just in case.
There are eight new notifications from Signal, all from Niibish. She just made me switch from imessage to threema to Signal because Edward Snowden tweeted that Signal is the safest texting app, mostly because the code is open source and has been independently verified. I wonder if she knows what “code” and “open source” mean, but if anyone can be trusted about these things my money’s on Snowden. Also I have no idea why she cares about internet security, but she clearly does. I have to look at my iphone every four minutes so I don’t miss anything because I can’t get the sound notifications to work on this app even though I’ve googled it. To be honest, this isn’t actually that big of a problem because I look at my beloved screen every four minutes, whether or not the sound notifications are on anyway. We all do and we all lie about it.
Niibish wants to know where I am, why I’m not up yet, why I’m not texting her back, and she’d like my opinion on the stories in the Toronto Star and Vice this morning about the flood. “ARE THEY GETTING IT?” is the second-last text. The last text is another “Where are you? ffs.”
Niibish is mad at me for making her text me instead of doing things the old way and she’s right and I promised it’s just a tool and that we’ll still do things the right way once this crisis is over. She typed in “PROMISE” in all caps like she was yelling. I texted back “of course,” like she was insane for thinking otherwise. Kwe texts me “of course” when she wants me to think I’m insane for thinking otherwise too.
I get dressed, take the bus and then the subway to headquarters. Headquarters is high up, like Nishnaabeg Mount Olympus, so we can see Lake Ontario out of the window. Only I call it headquarters — really it’s just a condo at Yonge and Dundas.
We call the lake Chi’Niibish, which means big water, and we share this brilliant peacemaker with the Mohawks. I call her Niibish for short and I’m the one that got her the iphone and taught her how to text. I look out the south-facing window of the condo and see her dense blue. She is full, too full, and she’s tipsy from the birth control pills, the plastics, the sewage, and the contraband that washes into her no matter what. She is too full and overflowing and no one saw this coming like no one saw Calgary flooding, even though every single one of us should have.
Five days ago she spilled over the boardwalk and flooded the Power Plant and Queens Quay, and we all got into twitter fights about the waterfront. Six days ago, she crept over the Lakeshore and drank up Union Station, and we called New York City because remember the hurricane. We found new places to charge our devices. She smothered the beach. She bathed the train tracks and Oshawa carpooled. She’s not angry even though she looks angry. She is full. She is full of sad. She wants us to see her, to see what we’re doing to her, and change. That’s the same thing that Kwe wants, so I know both the problem and the solution, and I know how much brave solutions like these require.
Niibish is just sitting and thinking and sporadically texting. They call it a crest, but not confidently because she should be receding by now. The math says receding and math is always confident, even when it’s dead wrong. The weather is also confident when it is happening, and the predictors are being fed a string of variables in which they can only predict unpredictability. The public is not happy.
Niibish is reflecting and no one knows how long reflecting takes or what the outcome will be. She is wondering if this is enough for us to stay woke. She is wondering what will happen if she recedes — Will they just build a big wall? Will they just breathe relief? Will they reflect on things?
Should this be a Braxton Hicks warning or creation?
While she’s sitting and thinking she’s also talking to Binesiwag. Those guys, hey. Only around in the summer, bringing big rains and big thunder and sometimes careless lightning and the fog that lets them do the things that need to get done and no one else wants to do. There’s the crucial decision, which is always the same no matter what the question: Do we make the crisis bigger or smaller or keep it just the same?
I’m getting the log ready just in case. I’ve gathered my crew together and we’re meeting where the nude beach used to be at Hanlan’s Point to practise holding our breath and diving. Everyone sat on a log during the last big flood, until we came up with a plan to create a new world. Muskrat got a handful of earth from the bottom of the lake like a rock star because everyone had already tried and failed. I breathed. Turtle shared her back, and we put her name on the place in return. We all danced a new world into reality. We made Turtle Island and it wasn’t so bad for a while. For a while we all got lost in the beauty of things, and the intelligence of hopeless romantics won the day. We’re not so confident in our making powers this time around though. Our false consciousness is large, our anxiety set to panic, our depression waiting just around the corner. We’re in a mid-life crisis, out of shape and overcompensating because it’s too late to change any of that. Beaver’s doing push-ups on the soggy grass. Bear’s doing power squats and bragging about his seven-minute workout app and the option of having a hippie with a whistle call out the next exercise. Muskrat is in his new wetsuit doing sit-ups, and not very good ones either. I’m wandering around the island instagramming pictures of big logs, deciding which one will be ours. And I’m texting Kwe, telling her that I love her, because she likes that, telling her to just stay in bed because I’ll be back soon and we almost always survive.
how to steal a canoe
kwe is barefoot on the cement floor
singing to a warehouse
of stolen canoes
bruised bodies
dry skin
hurt ribs
dehydrated rage
akiwenzii says, “it’s canoe jail”
the white skin of a tree is for slicing and feeling
& peeling & rolling & cutting & sewing
& pitching & floating & travelling
akiwenzii says, “oh you’re so proud of your collection
of ndns. good job zhaaganash,
good job”
kwe is praying to those old ones by dipping her fingers
into a plastic bottle of water
& rubbing the drops on the spine of each canoe
soft words
wet fingers
wet backs
akiwenzii & kwe are looking each canoe in the eye
one whispers back, “take the young one and run”
kwe looks at akiwenzii
akiwenzii takes the sage over to the
security guard & teaches him how to
smudge the canoe bodies. fake cop is basking in guilt-free importance.
kwe takes Her off the rack,
& onto her shoulders
she puts Her in the
flat bed and drives to Chemong
she pulls Her out into the middle of the lake
sinks Her with seven stones
just enough to
fill Her with lake &
suspend Her in wet
kwe sings the song
& She sings back
kwe sings the song
& She sings back
III.
stealing back red bodies
minomiinikeshii sings
you are here, because you’re in my heart
you are here, because you’re my witness
there are long rays of deepening sun
there is flat blue
lake wearing prairie
seed inseminating lake
if the stalk is floppy, we call it a poor erection
we’re in my canoe
in my head you built our fire
in real life i fed it my way
i fell grains and tobacco to lake
the long rays of deepening sun
&
nbsp; kiss each duck and goose before they leave
if the stalk is too wet, we call it a penis soaking in its favorite place
we abandoned shore
and meet the parts of me you don’t know
minomiinikeshii dances
past what should have been
stalks lean in her wind
patience growing mounds of potential
minomiinikeshii sings, and the universe falls in love
the bugs are going to irritate you
you’re a hunter
and there’s nowhere to pace
you’ll be too hot
the sun too deep
but here we are in spite
here we are, in the same canoe
we are so happy to be together
i hand you my .22
remind you not to shoot sideways
you are here, because you’re in my heart
you are here, because you’re my witness
there are long rays of deepening sun
we kiss the ducks and geese
and i knock the first grains into the boat.
minomiinikigiizis = the ricing moon
minomiinikigiizis = the last moon before it’s illegal to be together
CIRCLES UPON CIRCLES
I imagine that she looks like a stalk of wild rice — thin, graceful, full of hope in a way that’s calming, not grating. Her skin is dark and so are her nipples. Dark like she’s breastfeeding because she is breastfeeding all of us. She has good bones. I mean her bones carry the rest of her and they believe in her. They angle out of her flannel plaid shirts and jeans in a way that makes her easy to photograph, if that is something that matters to you. She has long, straight, black hair but she doesn’t need it. She’d stun us visually if it were short or if she was bald. Same with her glasses. You can just tell she’s from a good family, the kind that is so strongly rooted in land that they’re creating kids that don’t get tripped up by screens and jobs and credentials. If she were here in this canoe, seeing me like this, I’d call her Minomiinikeshii, after the first Minomiinikeshii, the spirit of the rice, even though she is not from here.
This Accident of Being Lost Page 5