whereas

excerpts from "whereas" by layli long soldier

WHEREAS a friend senses what she calls cultural emptiness in a poet's work and after a read-
ing she feels bad for feeling bad for the poet she admits. i want to respond the same could be
said for me, some sticky current of Indian emptiness. i feel it not just in my poems but when
i'm on drives, in conversations, or as i lie down to sleep but since this dialogue is about writing
i want to be correct with my languageness. in a note following the entry for Indian an oxford
dictionary warns: do not use Indian or Red Indian to talk about American native peoples, as these 
terms are now outdated; use American Indian instead. so i explain perhaps the same could be
said for my work some burden of American Indian emptiness in my poems how American
Indian emptiness surfaces not just on the page but often on drives, in conversations, or when i
lie down to sleep. but the term American Indian parts our conversation like a hollow bloated
boat that is not ours that neither my friend nor i want to board, knowing it will never take us
anywhere but to rot. if the language of race is ever truly attached to emptiness whatever it is
i feel now has me in the hull, head knees feet curled, i dare say, to fetal position --- but better
stated as the form i resort to inside the jaws of a reference;

.
.
.
WHEREAS my eyes land on the shoreline of "the arrival of Europeans in North America
opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples." because in others, i hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. that bitter hiding. my daughter picks up
new habits from friends. she'd been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto asphalt.

they carried her into the kitchen, she just fell, she's bleeding! deep red streams
down her arms and legs, trails on white tile. i looked at her face. a smile

quivered her. a laugh, a nervous. doing as her friends do, she braved new behavior, feigned
a grin --- i couldn't name it but i could spot it. stop, my girl. if you're hurting, cry.

like that. she let it out, a flood from living room to bathroom. then a soft water pour
i washed carefully light touch clean cotton to bandage. i faced her i reminded,

in our home in our family we are ourselves, real feelings. be true. yet i'm serious
when i say i laugh reading the phrase, "opened a new chapter." i can't help my body.

i shake. the realization that it took this phrase to show. my daughter's quiver isn't new ---
but a deep practice very old she's watching me;

.

by layli long soldier from whereas

a poem about writing, bo-ring. says my contemporary artistic companionate, a muscular ob-
servation and i agree. a poem about writing poems, how. boring as it is, it asks me to do. i
couldn't any other thing tonight. i sat i wrote about writing. i write i sit about writing. i'm
about to write about it, writing and sitting. i will write and sit with my writing.

defamiliarize your writing then, somebody says okay i'm not sitting then i say to somebody.
i'm chewing at a funeral and. i'm nibbling my pulp knuckles. i'm watching a man with a stain
on his. pants always wrinkle in this heat, gnats and humidity. i walk to the front pew to make
a lewd, joke. i regard laughter from the man in the. pants are always honest i mean really heavy
at a summer burial. yet he doesn't ever cry, the stained man, why. when i observe nothing (un-
usual) i do nothing (unusual) in response. new or novel. real lit relics on these occasions. in
ritual: nobody's learning, true. and to lewd is dumb, otherwise. like the way i put up my dukes
when i observe the cowboy kneel. he's praying he's asking. he doesn't see me, my gesture's fu-
tile. what am i doing here, writing. what am i doing here righting the page at funerals.