I.
in the summers we would flock to my great-aunt’s
swimming hole down the canyon
dizzy from the jumbling in a truck bed
poke at the tadpoles squirming in the red clay
my mother watched from orchard shade
she had been down here many years before
with her sisters her brothers
picking apples, following the bend
of the river leading the goats to the wayside to drink
now the water glooms
with cow manure uranium
we trace the mud with our eyes
watch the petroglyphs stretch
in the shadows
miss the feeling of the sun wicking river from our skin
II.
in 1956/ the glen canyon dam began construction/ with an explosion/
was hit with a demolition blast keyed/ by the push of a button/
in the oval office/ the bottom of the canyon/ dotted by navajo/
ute/ paiute footprints/
still cooling/ the explosion/ a scar in the earth still aching
with uranium mines/ yellowcake/ yellow corn/ tumbled
in the runoff/ what do you call ancestral homestead/stopped
like a kitchen sink/ the water/ of your people
redirected to ranches/ fatten cattle that render the san juan undrinkable/
quench the white men/ in bars/ that don’t admit NDNs/ water
and mineral/ packed into bombshells/ how do you drown
by your own artery/ today
the lake has never been shallower/ a drought
of its own becoming/ not even time to weep/ before the crossing
before the fleeing/ marina of familiar fossils/ zebra mussels
scour the bones of old adobe/ still
beneath the surface/ the ancient sun rendered closer
every day/ as the ranchers lament the withering/ the tourists
dock their houseboats/ the people who have known
this land/ see the slickrock
still/ emerging
III.
in the third world, coyote took the water monster’s baby
so the water monster decided to make it rain endlessly
the water rose and choked the peaks
of sacred mountains
the beings that lived there
did not know where to escape the flood
& what saved the world was a reed curling
into the sky a way to climb out into a fourth world
IV.
There are things that remain stolen that holy people
weep for And others look to us with upturned hands
Ask where the reeds come from
Flee to the highest peaks
Dream of another world
They can scurry into
Through a wound in the sky They created
We have no answer for them
We have known this the entire time
So we tell our stories Go to the water
Tend this land
& remember
—
Kinsale Drake (Diné) is winner of the 2023 National Poetry Series for her debut poetry collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poets.org, The Atlantic, Best New Poets, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She directs programming for NDN Girls Book Club, which distributes free books to Indigenous youth and communities.
