MIKE SUTIN
覧覧覧覧覧
Buffalo Hunt
-- Wanda
Willowind
Despite our wish for wise old ways,
to walk in nature's beauty proud,
in simple spirit life without
the mass of goods the mass of men
accumulate 'til journey's end,
our children want security
promised by electricity.
The warmth of wigwams past, of skins
of buffalo, woolen blankets
and winter fir afire seem
too far remote to raise desire
to stir the ashes of our dream.
[105]
Entering Sandia Reservation
-- Jackie Charley
The remote location of the pueblo of my people
was never meant to be a limitation
on the bounding line of the Sandia Indian Nation,
to be engirded as if in a plaza, grid or square.
My mud hut by the river was where I laid my head,
but my native land was where the river ran,
in high country where the great elk grazed,
where the grizzly bear caved, and for which our braves' blood
bled.
But you meant a reservation to be something to confine,
something akin to a wild west Mason-Dixon line,
a place in which to punish us and from which we were not to
stray.
Your cannon clipped our eagles' wings that once carried us widespread.
The barren, tree-less, no grass rectangular box
that your straight interstate intersects today
is not the land of the antelope, mountain lion, coyote, wolf or fox,
and not the land for which our fathers fought and for which we daily
pray.
Endnote: "It is time for the Great Spirit to cause a revelation
that no longer should any eagle have to die, or be kept captive to have
its feathers pulled out, for any ceremony, or for any other reason. The
eagle deserves to live and fly free; worship him as he soars in the great
blue sky!" Dayton Loomis, Santa Fe.
[106]
Remembering Acoma
-- Willow Flycatcher
"Every night just after dark, we goose
the statues in the park; if Sherman's horse
can take it, so can you."
I.
Why do we need dead hero cults
to celebrate our culture's past?
We want those gods that we can see,
who take our daily sacrifice,
to ease our guilt for being here,
to bask in glass mirror glory
of one much greater than ourselves,
Oh! greater than the sun itself.
II.
The heart quickens, the throat chokes up
with gratitude; man humbly trembles
in thanks for guiltless victory.
We love the soldiers marching,
the green fields and hills of home,
combat aircraft streaking overhead,
the snapping, flapping flags of freedom
unfurled and blowing in the wind.
III.
We want to feel we are the hero,
the one who sang and danced the best,
by bringing back part of the prey,
to transcend earthly limitations,
internalize the power play,
count coup, take gun, claim battles won,
flaunt medal, green beret or crest,
retake with honor Air Force One.
IV.
The scars of history take time to heal
while monuments to fallen heroes
are built by bloody battle victors
and fertilized by splat of sparrows;
we need our Independence Day.
[107]
V.
To deify our founding fathers,
our flag, fiestas, coronations,
these symbols, sacred history,
are monuments to you and me,
a mania for authenticity,
around which nations want to rally,
of mythic worlds and celebrations,
and always explanations, justifying.
To what end this demand for clans,
for peoplehood and states and roots?
We now dissemble based on boots
and pay lip service to our ethnic foods,
civility and culture interludes;
and nothing endures, nothing's stable,
love among man is just a fable
to those who still believe in Him,
not we who died at McCarty's rim.
VI.
Shoemaker loved each crater site,
and men can walk upon the moon.
Their ashes cannot rest with dust,
for one race worships rocky crust
of cold and lifeless planet places.
Our cremains red men do eschew,
But is the Earth not sacred too?
VII.
Oñate had a hollow foot
hacked off above the ankle boot
His statue's loss let loose the lie
well meaning men can do no wrong.
For us to celebrate the bad
does elevate the bad to good,
a circumstance well understood
by those who sawed to show the truth:
our heroes are but hollow men.
And to their lives, we say "amen."
Should we erect a proper plaque
in testimony to the rack?
[108]
VIII.
Could those who brought us sheep and pigs,
and better seeds and trees of fruit
to supplement our ears of corn
and beans and squash and kill of hunt
and brought us God to save our souls,
could not they recognize their toil
and years of settlement and life
without their crazy conqueror,
his gazing down upon our strife,
reminding us of our great shame;
unlike the Israelites of old,
we don't extol our life as slaves,
this brings no honor to our name.
IX.
To honor settling pioneers
they are inventing new tradition
and bestow authenticity
to denigrated history.
God knows they need some sense of pride
for they went down without a fight,
some say the victim of a bribe,
their leader lost in hasty flight.
For long we've mixed our eggs with seed,
no man can say that he is pure
but yet we bid our blood endure,
and off that hope our hatreds breed.
X.
What inborn makes us need our others?
Our Lord set us against our mothers,
but, yet, our lineage blood must last
to validate each otherwise
undistinguished unmarked grave stone,
our existential all alone.
Lucifer, biological
and alter ego of us all
was not a newborn Christian myth
but a charter member of B'nai B'rith.
[109]
XI.
Next time the noble foot is lost,
let's leave the leg just hanging there,
to teach that we must learn to love
all those we cannot understand
who populate this complex land.
Harsh symbols of barbarity;
Burn bronzes in the melting pot!
Reminders past of what we're not.
[110]
Endnotes: "Remembering Acoma"
- "Navajo Nation President Albert Hale . . . protested placement of
an ounce of ashes of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker aboard the unnamed
Lunar Prospector . . . . The moon is a sacred place in the religious beliefs
of many Native Americans,' he said, '. . . [I]t is sacrilegious . . . to
place human remains on the moon.'" "NASA Apologizes Over Remains," Albuquerque
Journal, January 14, 1998.
- "Nearly 400 years ago, conquistador Don Juan de Oñate ordered
his troops to cut off the right feet of warriors from Acoma Pueblo after
an uprising there claimed his nephew's life. In the last few days, unknown
vandals claiming to be acting on behalf of the 'Brothers of Acoma' sawed
the right foot off a monumental bronze sculpture of Oñate at a public
visitors center north of Espanola." "Onate's foot cut off," New Mexican,
January 8, 1998.
- "What might bring a man to order the beheading of two-thirds of the
settlers who followed him into New Mexico? Or cutting off a foot from each
of 24 Acoma Pueblo Indians and limited slavery. For dozens of others? Or
the selling of hundreds of Jumano Indians from the Saline pueblos of the
Manzano Mountains? And the nighttime assassinations of two of his own captains?
Or throwing a Taos chief from a terrace to his death?" "A Man of His Times,"
Journal
North, January 18, 1998.
- "We New Mexicans have improved upon the old melting pot concept. We
continue to survive together yet have maintained and even admire our cultural
differences." Thomas Chavez, "Here comes the 400th for Juan de Oñate,"
New
Mexican, January 18, 1989.
- "And Moses said unto the people: 'Remember this day, in which ye came
out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage. . . ." Exodus XIII, 3.
- "For I am come to set . . . the daughter against her mother. . . ."
St. Matthew, X, 35.
[111]
Keep Off Median
Though unequaled in uniqueness,
you are yet untraveled
along life's long highway,
young Macdonald;
therefore, let these words sway
your course up and down
the interstate identified as twenty-five,
from the highs of the rio arriba,
to the lows of the rio abajo, I've
lived the life of which I write; grandpapa
knows you cannot grow on status quo:
keep off the median, Ian,
stay on the straight and narrow,
apply yourself as if an arrow,
the way the winter sparrow flies;
do what is right in the eyes of the Lord,
and always try to travel toward the light;
seek truth and stay away from harmful lies;
follow the untraveled trail,
and avoid the discord of the horde;
and when the world becomes Sisyphean
remember, you are also Maccabean.
* Ian Sutin Macdonald. Born January 5, 1995.
[112]
At the End of the Trail
-- Joaquin de la Raza
Once we were grounded
in this old mountain town,
comfortable in our culture,
secure in our tongue.
Storm clouds of conquest shroud
our survival as a people.
The cold drizzle of covered
wagons west rests hard among us.
Niña, habla usted en Español,
in language lives our oversoul.
[113]
Hard Hat Human
-- C. Soutine
Listen, I am french, you jerk:
a papal emissary
from the Vatican coliseum,
a stable missionary
to the red, brown and white,
I came to Santa Fe to work
in the desert of the Lord,
lacking neither room nor board,
to build Our Lady of the Light,
to bring truth and teaching
to the heathen and unwashed alike.
I was working mission in Kentucky,
and, I suppose, you would call it lucky,
that I got the holy call to be
an entirely separate bishopry,
away from the far flung Durango see
that submitted to the dominance of Rome,
after which I finally felt at home.
My motto was fides et opera,
and, although I wore a black cape,
lined with violet silk,
I cannot take credit for the
later outdoor singers
out here in Tesuque,
(where I set up my lodge camp),
or for the opening nights
frequented by weird camp followers
and others of their ilk;
but, I am responsible
for my own real zingers . . .
not to be outdone,
I took on that there Taos padre;
I was one mean tough madre,
and, of course, in the end, I won.
I ran a bunch of priests, brothers, and nuns,
and, they all had to learn to shoot with guns.
[114]
In the center of the Capital,
they helped build schools and a hospital.
Still unable to finance the finite
from my own people,
I turned to the jews
to complete construction of my pews,
but not my steeple,
which, if the truth were known,
finally put me in my mausoleum.
Above the main doorway at the apex
of the arch, in stone, I carved
the tetragrammaton, my monument
to Judaica, my entry to Britannica,
which, together with the bermuda
triangle, almost placed a hex
upon my history; my bio
did, in fact, get past Rosario.
Look for me in the index
of the encyclopedia. They named
my railway line crossing after me,
and not because I made the trains
run on time. Humor me, pronounce
my name as if it rhymed with "agree";
together, we will build esprit, mais oui?
It is hard to be a prophet
when you do not know where you are at
or where you are going to be.
Indulging in the garden pines
around the rectory also
humors me; I will speak of bees,
Auvergne grape vines and almond trees
planted in aisles en mon acreage
that will likely fall by axe;
for there is no vobiscum pax
in the chain saw massacre age,
only rumors that the trees have tumors.
If it is all the same to you, I would rather
not be remembered as I was in Willa Cather.
[115]
I do not want to be iconized like Cardinal Newman.
I would prefer to be pedestalized as a hard hat human.
Endnote: Seventh verse and this note added in March, 1995, following
announcement that six old trees planted by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy
were taken from the garden rectory of St. Francis Cathedral over the whining
of chain saws, while artists coveted burls "which are like a tree's version
of tumors."
[116]
Bring 'Em Back Alive
- Wizipan Wingfoot
Prologue Prayer
(freely translated from the original
by the author)
The morning sun
bless the way ahead;
once ran
sanctify
like First Man
this journey.
once ran.
Elders,
I will run fast
I have come to race.
to rising sun.
Paint my bare body
Both Gods and sun
and my face
arise at morn.
to tighten my skin.
I will run East
Let the holy day begin.
to create a cord
Dried buffalo heart,
of life to connect
give me courage;
the earth to the sky.
eagle down
in my hair, give me the power
Trail God,
of the air;
guide the soles
eagle feathers,
of my feet
keep me strong;
to the altar
deer tails,
in the center
give me speed;
of this place
arrowpoint
that holds
upon my tongue,
the stone
send me straight.
in which beats
the heart
I am the people.
of the world.
I run
for the wonder
Talking God,
of the sun.
I will travel
on rainbows
I am
and sunbeams
the last runner.
from this holy
corn pollened road;
(repeated lines omitted)
[117]
Through
of river rock
each ponderosa
and gnarly roots,
pine,
liberally
filtered
lined
like a vertical
with spring shoots
venetian
of popsicle red
blind,
lupine
the sun zebras
and swirly vines
my skin.
of alpine
strawberry.
I am become
Koshari,
The drum
living
hums a hymn
in the east
to the ground.
at the house
The only sound
of the Sun,
at eleven
decorated
thousand four
for the direction
is mountain river
of the dance,
drainage roar
like a moving
grinding granite
picture screen,
toward some shore.
shadowed
by flickering
Coronado,
blacks on white,
Kearny,
projected
and the
from sprocketed
Confederates
strips
conquered
of celluloid.
the Capital
I am a warm
more
winter clown,
years ago
swivel-hipping,
than I care
crazy-legging
to count.
like a half-back
Why
headed
this year
toward open field,
they've
seeking
logged over
to avoid
the west
grasping
fork
outstretched
of the Nambe, I do not know.
arms
I suppose
of opposing
we're
giant gods,
blessed
along a narrow
with a surfeit
footpath
of forest service
[118]
work.
of rock
We've
that hurls
been able
its head
to beat our way
toward
up the ridge line
heaven; but, hey,
to the peak
can't we save
of the penitent
this cattle spread
without
bacterial
the benefit
micro organism
of a bridge
culture
before.
elsewhere,
We've beat back
without preying
the drag line
upon this pristine
and kept
watershed?
the back hoe
This is not
at bay . . .
the foamy froth
and in the City
rising from clear
below.
clean
We've kept
pools
the summit
at the foot
sacred.
of cascading
stepping stones;
At twelve
these are
thousand
the soap suds
feet
refuse
up in the sky,
of the stream bed.
it's hard
We've been
to hold
put upon,
your runner's high,
like a Philistine
with each step
vulture,
in your high tech
and I have
sportswear
succumbed
splattered
to
in fresh
sullen
cowpie.
spleen.
I do not mean
to seem
Mothers, don't ever
like a malcontent
let your children
while
grow up
ascending
to be white eyes.
this
My people
fairly
have always been
bare
runners . . . and
block
sweat porers . . . and
[119]
drum beaters . . . and
And when
spear chuckers . . . and
I stop
tree huggers . . . and
to do it,
lovers
soaked
of the open space.
with sweat,
Come, children
I am
of the warrior
silhouetted
race,
in frozen frame
let's get back
against the forest
to abusing
spruce and fir,
our bodies.
flashing
Let's attack
like a
the timber line
spot-lighted
together.
store front
Is the only rock that's holy
mannequin,
only the rock that rolls?
resplendent
Let's make the whole world in a wide
pin
holy.
stripe suit
and shiny spats.
In high places inhabits
the all holy great spirits.
This brief
Every mountain's sacred.
relief,
Every hill is a shrine.
this trespass
We will make a Palestine
pause,
of every watershed
will not cause
for which our feet have bled. the green
dream
To those
to die;
of us
we
who
do not
run them,
step
to piss
or pee
upon a peak
on the same
in the Pecos
tundra
is like
twice.
stopping
to smell
Descending
the roses
from the most
in a public park.
westerly summit,
Potty
the footpath
training
follows the ancient
is a never
fence line,
ending
twisted wires
process.
armed with barbs,
[120]
along the sinuosities
of the ponderosa pine,
of the ridge,
weaving
tortuous,
through waves
like a curvature
of river rock,
of the spine,
I crossover
sensuous,
at the ford,
beguiling,
then follow
serpentine,
the cheerful
like the snake dance
ramble
of paradise,
of the feeder creek
and gives birth to
toward
wounded knee and
the scene
twisted sister
of my people . . .
along a cottontrail
as if pulling in
of tears.
the first feast day,
home,
The scree slope
from the forests.
does not provide
good purchase
I am again:
across the pass;
Koshari,
but, here,
from whom the
in this place,
obscene
my mind rests.
is accepted
Sunshine bounces back
and common place.
off boulders,
penstemon,
Sequestered,
paint brush,
then,
and dynasty sky
in civilized sequence,
columbine,
as the way down
the cocaine
widens
that blinds
with tracks
my brain
of the trailmobile:
from pain.
carved roads,
corroded cans,
My feet prance the sailor's
eroded hills,
horn pipe,
trashed arroyos,
undulating
rusted radiators,
like an Algerian abdomen,
crushed mattress springs;
insinuating
massive torreons,
myself
topping spatial palaces,
into a wilderness
the subdivided
trance,
adobe abodes
seduced
of other giant serpent gods
by the scent
sleekly slicing
[121]
up the switchbacks
(A short tear falls
on the slopes of the Sangres. from
the eye of Koshari.)
The consequence:
"Private,
Yes, and
No Trespassing,
where have
Do Not Enter."
all the copper
No great
wheat leaf
goodness
pennies gone?
lies
Surely not all submerged
beyond
in the tar melt murk
the
of mushy
wilderness
summer pavement.
gate.
Even now,
they are paving
"Parking
over the rocky arroyos
is prohibited
with asphalt;
past these pillars."
the lair
Do I
of the mountain lion
feel inhibited?
lies buried
You betchum,
beneath five feet
red ryder;
of black pitch.
to be a
The change
serious
in the base course
strider,
is a source
one must
of shock
chase rabbits
to my system;
through the chamisa
this is
unimpeded
a crock
by palaces;
of shit,
and, if we are quick,
the arm-pit
we catch 'em.
of progress
that will never
The tribal elders
halt.
proclaimed:
"A short fall
Drive a survey stake
in the projected
into the heart
seed corn
of the earth.
budget
prevented
The world
a planting
is a shopping mart
of flowers
of agonies.
in the parks.
There will be no flowers
Bulldozers
this year."
and Peterbilts
[122]
will knock us
Save us
off our stilts
from ourselves.
and bring us
Do not
to our knees.
divide us
from life.
Our land is built
Bring us
as upon a sack
back alive.
of building blocks
lacking balance
like rocks on sand.
The practice
of the wild
will fail;
no cactus
will survive;
stamp it
out,
and dump oil on our creatures,
pour
into our
choking rivers,
sewer seepage
spoil
that no sump
pump
can ever drain.
Our soil
is sick.
The spirit
of vomit
covers
the earth--
and an unformed
void
again
hovers
over the face
of our troubled
waters.
[123]
Endnotes: "Bring 'Em Back Alive"
-- Genesis I, 2.
-- "Flowers won't be planted in the city's parks and gardens this year
to save $50,000, a move one city councillor predicted will give Albuquerque
'the ambiance of a ghost town'" . . . . "We didn't plant any flowers this
fall for the spring, and there won't be any summer flowers either." Albuquerque
Journal, a Wednesday in December, 1990.
[124]
An Only Kid-A Hidden Memory
--Debbie Valle de Baca
1.
chariots."
Like
Prince Faisal
As the future
who once
changes fast,
avowed,
greater grows
years ago:
my nostalgia
"I long
for idealized
for the vanished
images and
gardens of
for the values
Cordova,"
of the vanished
and dreamt
past.
from the desert,
of a beloved
2.
Spain,
I think
I, too,
my own
sing
wistful wishes
this song
to preserve
of songs,
pristine
from the desert,
surroundings
a song
and a simple
that springs
village way
from a vital
of life
and profound
are valid;
human need
to keep
yet, when I
my own
lift the lid
vineyard
off my pot
and feed
of posole,
my kid
eased slowly
beside the
to a boil,
shepherds' tents.
the taste
just
"I have compared
does not leap
thee,
onto my tongue
O my love,
as when,
to a steed
years ago,
in Pharaoh's
in the hidden
[125]
northern
for the children,
mountain
and their children,
village
and their
of Chimayo,
children's children,
New Mexico,
including me,
my graying
flitting,
great
at play,
grandmother
around her feet,
(not of a
on the warm
landed
wooden floor,
family,
like the
like
ever
the Cordovas,
present
or others
flickering
of their
votive
ilk),
candles
above the hearth
barely
while she
five
fashioned
feet
feasts
tall,
for Pentecost,
in faded,
for Corpus Christi,
but festive
and, she said,
silk,
for the wilderness,
weeping
without
with
knowing
pleasure,
why,
toil-
vapored
bent
in a smoke-ghost
over a small
aroma
dual wood stove
of other spice
oven and range
scents
for pots,
of ages past,
within black
stewed hunks
sooted,
of succulent
once white washed
cabrito
walls
and charbroiled
of what,
chiles verdes
today,
for celebration
would be
of Cinco
called
de Mayo,
a hovel,
[127]
a casita,
the size
of a dog house
with vigas,
davening,
so to speak,
to herself,
absent
comprehension:
"Thou shalt
not seethe
a kid
in its
mother's
milk."
Endnote: The Song of Songs 1:6-9; Leviticus 11:35;
Exodus 5:1; Deuteronomy 14:21; Orlando Romero, La Villa Real
[128]
Mike Sutin is a partner in a Santa Fe law firm, Sutin, Thayer &
Browne. He was admitted to the New Mexico bar in 1959, has been a member
of Sutin, Thayer & Browne from 1959 to the present, and served as managing
partner of the firm from 1971 to 1983. His first book of poems, Voices
from the Corner/Voces del Rincon, a one-person anthology centering
on northern New Mexico's multi-cultural tensions, was published in 2000
by Pennywhistle Press. Sutin's second book of poems, Naked Ladies on
the Road, concentrates on the good, bad and ugly of Santa Fe's celebrated
and legendary Canyon Road, and is forthcoming from Sunstone Press of Santa
Fe.
The poems appearing here were first published in Voices from the
Corner/Voces del Rincon (Pennywhistle Press of Santa Fe, 2000). An
earlier version of "Hard Hat Human" was published in the Inkslinger's
Review of New Mexico Books and Authors. |
