Read Online Original Fire by Louise Erdrich - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Louise Erdrich
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died.
Saint Odium of the hundred-proof blood
and Saint Tremens of the great pagan spiders
dripping from the light fixtures.
You powerful triumvirate, intercede for us
drunks stalled in the bars,
float our asses off the cracked stools
and over to the tribal college,
where the true saints are ready to sacrifice their brain cells
for our brain cells, in that holy exchange which is called learning.
Saint Microcephalia, patron of huffers and dusters,
you of the cooked brain and mean capacity, you
of the simian palm line and poor impulse control,
you of the Lysol-soaked bread, you sleeping with the dogs
underneath the house, hear our prayers
which we utter backwards and sideways
as nothing makes sense
least of all your Abstinence Campaign
from which Oh Lord Deliver Us.
Saints Primapara, Gravida, and Humpenenabackseat,
you patrons of unsafe teenage sex
and fourteen-year-old mothers,
pray for us now and at the hour of our birth,
amen.
The Fence
Then one day the gray rags vanish
and the sweet wind rattles her sash.
Her secrets bloom hot. I’m wild for everything.
My body is a golden armor around my unborn child’s body,
and I’ll die happy, here on the ground.
I bend to the mixture of dirt, chopped hay,
grindings of coffee from our dark winter breakfasts.
I spoon the rich substance around the acid-loving shrubs.
I tear down last year’s drunken vines,
pull the black rug off the bed of asparagus
and lie there, knowing by June I’ll push the baby out
as easily as seed wings fold back from the cotyledon.
I see the first leaf already, the veined tongue
rigid between the thighs of the runner beans.
I know how the shoot will complicate itself
as roots fill the trench.
Here is the link fence, the stem doubling toward it,
and something I’ve never witnessed.
One moment the young plant trembles on its stalk.
The next, it has already gripped the wire.
Now it will continue to climb, dragging rude blossoms
to the other side
until in summer fruit like green scimitars,
the frieze of vines, and then the small body
spread before me in need
drinking light from the shifting wall of my body,
and the fingers, tiny stems wavering to mine,
flexing for the ascent.
Ninth Month
This is the last month, the petrified forest
and the lake which has long since turned to grass.
The sun roars over, casting its light and absence
in identical seams. One day. Another.
The child sleeps on in its capsized boat.
The hull is weathered silver and our sleep is green and dark.
Dreams of the rower, hands curled in the shape of oars,
listening for the cries of the alabaster birds.
All is silent, the animals hurled into quartz.
Our bed is the wrecked blue island of time and love.
Black steeples, black shavings of magnetized iron,
through which the moon parades her wastes,
drawing the fruit from the female body,
pulling water like blankets up other shores.
Then slowly the sky is colored in, the snow
falls evenly into the blackness of cisterns.
The steel wings fan open that will part us from each other
and the waves break and fall according to their discipline.
Breath that moves on the waters.
Small boat, small rower.
Birth
When they were wild
When they were not yet human
When they could have been anything,
I was on the other side ready with milk to lure them,
And their father, too, each name a net in his hands.
New Mother
1
I am here to praise this body
on loan from the gods
by which we know the god in us
and see the god made earth,
pulled out blue and stunned into the lights.
2
Sometimes in the frenzy of first events
there comes to me a strange
declamatory awareness
as though my consciousness has stirred
from the heap of broken toys
and new toys
that is my baby’s existence.
When I look into her eyes I see below
the surface of things
into the water of the other surface
through the layers of that surface
to the original fire.
3
When you wake sometimes,
Saint Odium of the hundred-proof blood
and Saint Tremens of the great pagan spiders
dripping from the light fixtures.
You powerful triumvirate, intercede for us
drunks stalled in the bars,
float our asses off the cracked stools
and over to the tribal college,
where the true saints are ready to sacrifice their brain cells
for our brain cells, in that holy exchange which is called learning.
Saint Microcephalia, patron of huffers and dusters,
you of the cooked brain and mean capacity, you
of the simian palm line and poor impulse control,
you of the Lysol-soaked bread, you sleeping with the dogs
underneath the house, hear our prayers
which we utter backwards and sideways
as nothing makes sense
least of all your Abstinence Campaign
from which Oh Lord Deliver Us.
Saints Primapara, Gravida, and Humpenenabackseat,
you patrons of unsafe teenage sex
and fourteen-year-old mothers,
pray for us now and at the hour of our birth,
amen.
The Fence
Then one day the gray rags vanish
and the sweet wind rattles her sash.
Her secrets bloom hot. I’m wild for everything.
My body is a golden armor around my unborn child’s body,
and I’ll die happy, here on the ground.
I bend to the mixture of dirt, chopped hay,
grindings of coffee from our dark winter breakfasts.
I spoon the rich substance around the acid-loving shrubs.
I tear down last year’s drunken vines,
pull the black rug off the bed of asparagus
and lie there, knowing by June I’ll push the baby out
as easily as seed wings fold back from the cotyledon.
I see the first leaf already, the veined tongue
rigid between the thighs of the runner beans.
I know how the shoot will complicate itself
as roots fill the trench.
Here is the link fence, the stem doubling toward it,
and something I’ve never witnessed.
One moment the young plant trembles on its stalk.
The next, it has already gripped the wire.
Now it will continue to climb, dragging rude blossoms
to the other side
until in summer fruit like green scimitars,
the frieze of vines, and then the small body
spread before me in need
drinking light from the shifting wall of my body,
and the fingers, tiny stems wavering to mine,
flexing for the ascent.
Ninth Month
This is the last month, the petrified forest
and the lake which has long since turned to grass.
The sun roars over, casting its light and absence
in identical seams. One day. Another.
The child sleeps on in its capsized boat.
The hull is weathered silver and our sleep is green and dark.
Dreams of the rower, hands curled in the shape of oars,
listening for the cries of the alabaster birds.
All is silent, the animals hurled into quartz.
Our bed is the wrecked blue island of time and love.
Black steeples, black shavings of magnetized iron,
through which the moon parades her wastes,
drawing the fruit from the female body,
pulling water like blankets up other shores.
Then slowly the sky is colored in, the snow
falls evenly into the blackness of cisterns.
The steel wings fan open that will part us from each other
and the waves break and fall according to their discipline.
Breath that moves on the waters.
Small boat, small rower.
Birth
When they were wild
When they were not yet human
When they could have been anything,
I was on the other side ready with milk to lure them,
And their father, too, each name a net in his hands.
New Mother
1
I am here to praise this body
on loan from the gods
by which we know the god in us
and see the god made earth,
pulled out blue and stunned into the lights.
2
Sometimes in the frenzy of first events
there comes to me a strange
declamatory awareness
as though my consciousness has stirred
from the heap of broken toys
and new toys
that is my baby’s existence.
When I look into her eyes I see below
the surface of things
into the water of the other surface
through the layers of that surface
to the original fire.
3
When you wake sometimes,
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