Ode to Oaktown I wired my sorrows into Klieg lights and let them shine all over Oakland, city of Black Panthers and Hells Angels and General Strikes, driving from the Bronx in a green Toyota Corolla searching. Was it freedom, or a film I wanted to make something of myself, took refuge in Oakland’s Lake Merritt, caught breadcrumbs […]
it was a time for flying a time for birds a raven whisked me off from san francisco a raven greeted me in tokyo a flock were waiting in the trees of nara each one a mystic shade of black back at the base of the sacred mountain a single swallow binked her beak into […]
A Spring Poem Song for Misty and Lori feel good about yourself early in the morning you can hear the birds chirping, whistling, right there right there in the yard listen to them see how light they are hopping about they know the spirits are here early in the morning before sunrise in the gray […]
Once, a boy touched me on my nose, the squat slope unlike his own. If our bodies were land, his was full of ridges, cliffs dark under snow, jagged spectacles- and parting the folds together, we found mine: a small yellow plain. We fingered the grass. Felt its cold tear our fingers, our hands shifting, […]
Faded years ago fat & sacred magpies gnashed yuwepooee berries on the shaded eastern end of the buckbrush & I joined them, toying with red fruit. Sated, Messiah’s birds fled & I followed, my voracious wings flinging me far from my home of eighteen years. I circled clouds for decades until I fell to the […]
I’m in Love with a 1%er for occupy wall street I should have been alarmed when you started speaking in equations numerical manipulations and your stories didn’t add up human expression cost too much so you began sending me bank statements instead of love letters you, the one I trusted with my parents’ retirement and […]
The day you died God stopped questioning his son’s sexuality 33-year-old Nazarene with no kids at a time when men fathered at 19 and grandfathered at 38 no Mary Magdalene no Mary Kate and Ashley no Mary Jane yes, there were questions in heaven bigger than does it exist? and it does. there was living […]
Adrian Louis is a renowned writers whose books include WILD INDIANS & OTHER CREATURES, SKINS, AMONG THE DOG EATERS, FIRE WATER WORLD and many other books. He is a founding member of the Native American Journalists Association. His 2006 collection of poems, LOGORRHEA (Northwestern University Press), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Jessica Helen Lopez is a National Poetry Slam and Women of the World slam champion performance poet. Her debut collection, Always Messing With Them Boys, won a Zia Book Award from the New Mexico Press Women and was a Southwest Book of the Year pick.
Adrian C. Louis is one of the most influential Native American poets of our day, often cited as a major influence by the following generation of young Native writers. His new book of poetry, SAVAGE SUNSETS, is just out this fall from West End.
