Qwo-Li Driskill

I-gv-yi-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-sgo-hni-ho-’i/ FIRST CHEROKEE LESSON: MOURNING Find a flint blade Use your teeth as a whetstone Cut your hair Talk to shadows and crows Cry your red throat raw Learn to translate the words you miss most: dust                     love                    poetry Learn to say home My cracked earth lips drip words not sung as lullabies to my infant ears not laughed over dinner or choked on in despair No They played dead until the soldiers passed covered the fields like corpses and escaped into the mountains When it’s safe we’ll find you they promised But we were already gone before sunrise I crawl through a field of twisted bodies to find them I do everything Beginning Cherokee tells me Train my tongue to lie still Keep teeth tight against lips Listen to instruction tapes Study flash cards How can I greet my ancestors in a language they don’t understand My tear ducts fill with milk because what I most love was lost at birth My blood roars skin to blisters weeps haunted calls of owls bones splinter jut through skin until all of me is wounded as this tongue Ta-li-ne-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-ni-s-gi-li/ SECOND CHEROKEE LESSON: GHOSTS Leave your hair at the foot of your bed Scratch your tongue with a cricket’s claw to speak again Stop the blood with cornmeal Your ancestors will surround you as you sleep keep away ghosts of generals presidents       priests who hunger for your rare and tender tongue They will keep away ghosts so you have strength to battle the living Stories float through lives with an owl’s sudden swooping I knew some Cherokee when I was little My cousins taught me