I feel a thick cord. It connects my spirits to a memory that I have tried to forget. I have pretended it wasn't there, and I drank or even smoked my … - Joy Harjo
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I feel a thick cord. It connects my spirits to a memory that I have tried to forget. I have pretended it wasn't there, and I drank or even smoked my way around it when I was younger. Then I buried the memory under accomplishment. My story is stalled here, as if the cord has choked off the rest of the story and I cannot move forward. As the story maker, I have to find a way. First, I need to speak and remember what I do not want to remember. Even now, years later, when my mother is gone, even the monster is gone, I have come to understand they do not want the haunting either. They want to move on.
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Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo (May 9, 1951) is a poet, musician, author and the first Native American United States Poet Laureate.
I thought my dance alone through worlds of odd and eccentric planets that no one else knew would sustain me.
"I remember when there was no urge to cut the land or each other into pieces, when we knew how to think in beautiful. (Lines from Harjo's poem "Emergence".)"
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FOR EARTH’S GRANDSONS Stand tall, no matter your height, how dark your skin Your spirit is all colors within You are made of the finest woven light From the iridescent love that formed your mothers, fathers Your grandparents all the way back on the spiral road — There is no end to this love It has formed your bodies Feeds your bright spirits And no matter what happens in these times of breaking — No matter dictators, the heartless, and liars No matter — you are born of those Who kept ceremonial embers burning in their hands All through the miles of relentless exile Those who sang the path through massacre All the way to sunrise You will make it through
