Read Online Original Fire by Louise Erdrich - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louise Erdrich
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crying
in the pure desolation of the newly realized,
I dream you are drifting off
in your little boat.
I crawl to you like swimming and hold you in my arms
and then I wonder if it was cruel, yes, cruel,
to force you with such violence through my body.
To bring you here.
That is why, when I find you,
I lay my hands upon you
in so tender a way
that you do not feel me quite at first.
I draw you back and you are calmed.
That is why I touch you with a lightness
I can repeat nowhere else.
That is why these anxious pictures
of you, larger every month, and why I call
your name continually,
throwing it out like an anchor.
Sorrows of the Frog Woman
“Her fear was for her child. Searching all around, she saw the footprints of an enormous frog and with them, the tracks of the little dog, as if he had been dragged along on his paws. She knew then that it was the Frog Woman who had stolen her baby and knew by the tracks that the little dog had tried to hold back the cradle board with his teeth.”
——from “Wampum Hair,” a story told by Nawaquay-geezhik (Charles Kawbawgam)
1 Transformation
My husband was a prince who kissed me
until my eyes bulged and my skin
melted to a green film on my bones.
My mouth split my face
and I croaked, take me, oh take me.
So I was, deeper
into my startling new body.
As I sank back onto the wet springs
of my haunches, as I powerfully gathered
my tongue unfolded in a blur,
a sticky lasso,
and plucked a fly from his lapel—
my last wifely act.
2 Control
At first, I hated this body,
my lung-thin skin, my temptress spots.
I wanted red silk and you gave me this!
Advantages—my bones are bendable straws
through which I drink sun,
golden yolk, food of inner life, heat, tremendous wish.
And there is night and the many voices
seething delirium
universal mirrors that are my eyes
implacable gold
What you change cannot love you.
I told him that. He kissed me anyway.
3 Origin
I was hungry, so the author of all things
gave me the flies of sorrow to eat.
Gave me the underslung heroic couplets
of a man’s breast to drink from.
Gave me the perfect nothing
of my own original soul
to dive and dive in never touching bottom.
Sometimes I have the memory of what it was like
to be truly lovely
to dance by candlelight and tear the filmy cotton lace
off my nipples and draw you in.
Sometimes I have the memory of what it was like
to be another kind of food.
4 King Black Snake
My god, my predator,
to get away from you I change shapes.
I become the laughter at my core.
Time
My breasts are soft.
My hair is dull.
I am growing into the body
of the old woman who will bear me
toward my death,
my death which will do me no harm.
Every day the calico cat returns from the fields
with a mouse in her jaws.
After every bite of the tender lawn, the ground squirrel
jerks and flinches,
but no hawk drops out of the sky.
The fat creature continues to eat, nervously
stuffing itself with pleasure.
I watch him as I drink from a bottle of grassy wine.
Why do I long
to be devoured and to forget
in life rather than in death?
What is the difference?
Spring Evening on Blind Mountain
I won’t drink wine tonight
I want to hear what is going on
not in my own head
but all around me.
I sit for hours
outside our house on Blind Mountain.
Below this scrap of yard
across the ragged old pasture,
two horses move
pulling grass into their mouths, tearing up
wildflowers by the roots.
They graze shoulder to shoulder.
Every night they lean together in sleep.
Up here, there is no one
for me to fail.
You are gone.
Our children are sleeping.
I don’t even have to write this down.
Blue
I have moved beyond my life
into the blueness of the tiny flower
called Sky Pilot.
The sheer stain of the petals
fills the sky in my heart.
Over the field,
two bluebirds pause
on shivering wings.
They could as well have been a less glorious
color, and the
in the pure desolation of the newly realized,
I dream you are drifting off
in your little boat.
I crawl to you like swimming and hold you in my arms
and then I wonder if it was cruel, yes, cruel,
to force you with such violence through my body.
To bring you here.
That is why, when I find you,
I lay my hands upon you
in so tender a way
that you do not feel me quite at first.
I draw you back and you are calmed.
That is why I touch you with a lightness
I can repeat nowhere else.
That is why these anxious pictures
of you, larger every month, and why I call
your name continually,
throwing it out like an anchor.
Sorrows of the Frog Woman
“Her fear was for her child. Searching all around, she saw the footprints of an enormous frog and with them, the tracks of the little dog, as if he had been dragged along on his paws. She knew then that it was the Frog Woman who had stolen her baby and knew by the tracks that the little dog had tried to hold back the cradle board with his teeth.”
——from “Wampum Hair,” a story told by Nawaquay-geezhik (Charles Kawbawgam)
1 Transformation
My husband was a prince who kissed me
until my eyes bulged and my skin
melted to a green film on my bones.
My mouth split my face
and I croaked, take me, oh take me.
So I was, deeper
into my startling new body.
As I sank back onto the wet springs
of my haunches, as I powerfully gathered
my tongue unfolded in a blur,
a sticky lasso,
and plucked a fly from his lapel—
my last wifely act.
2 Control
At first, I hated this body,
my lung-thin skin, my temptress spots.
I wanted red silk and you gave me this!
Advantages—my bones are bendable straws
through which I drink sun,
golden yolk, food of inner life, heat, tremendous wish.
And there is night and the many voices
seething delirium
universal mirrors that are my eyes
implacable gold
What you change cannot love you.
I told him that. He kissed me anyway.
3 Origin
I was hungry, so the author of all things
gave me the flies of sorrow to eat.
Gave me the underslung heroic couplets
of a man’s breast to drink from.
Gave me the perfect nothing
of my own original soul
to dive and dive in never touching bottom.
Sometimes I have the memory of what it was like
to be truly lovely
to dance by candlelight and tear the filmy cotton lace
off my nipples and draw you in.
Sometimes I have the memory of what it was like
to be another kind of food.
4 King Black Snake
My god, my predator,
to get away from you I change shapes.
I become the laughter at my core.
Time
My breasts are soft.
My hair is dull.
I am growing into the body
of the old woman who will bear me
toward my death,
my death which will do me no harm.
Every day the calico cat returns from the fields
with a mouse in her jaws.
After every bite of the tender lawn, the ground squirrel
jerks and flinches,
but no hawk drops out of the sky.
The fat creature continues to eat, nervously
stuffing itself with pleasure.
I watch him as I drink from a bottle of grassy wine.
Why do I long
to be devoured and to forget
in life rather than in death?
What is the difference?
Spring Evening on Blind Mountain
I won’t drink wine tonight
I want to hear what is going on
not in my own head
but all around me.
I sit for hours
outside our house on Blind Mountain.
Below this scrap of yard
across the ragged old pasture,
two horses move
pulling grass into their mouths, tearing up
wildflowers by the roots.
They graze shoulder to shoulder.
Every night they lean together in sleep.
Up here, there is no one
for me to fail.
You are gone.
Our children are sleeping.
I don’t even have to write this down.
Blue
I have moved beyond my life
into the blueness of the tiny flower
called Sky Pilot.
The sheer stain of the petals
fills the sky in my heart.
Over the field,
two bluebirds pause
on shivering wings.
They could as well have been a less glorious
color, and the
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