Arianne True

water asleep on the wall (the view home from Brattleboro)

I
at this distance, my chest slackens
taut cord loosed, quiet
in the fall crackling red 

a truck horn bucks the still

even these low mountains, old, worn,
cut-open and green,
woke up in clouds

west, cedar hip-slings branches,
drapes spine, curls ribs, watershed
caught in the round, pliant and pious
rough, groundward

these eastern forests   
grow down, push
      the land they root
shrinking

II
moisture on a tongue made
tired: “salal,” “cedar,”
“thimbleberry,” “lichen”

sound enough to coat a mouth
slow with river fog, to
keep home damp on my hands,
pulsing under snow, wary
of rasping winter

here, snow brings the sky close
home, the water raises a full mouth, spilling

the white peeling young birch
waits to speak sugar maple
an underwing flashes blackbird
listen like a gull for waves
douglas firs heal around
the memory of lightning

Annabel and Maude at the Gallows

the West,
ploughed      sown      harrowed in
                 clods            upon heaven

day pale and wan
bound around the field
bone ground
between two stones.
crab-tree sticks to skin

a madman                 , a maiden
        blew out clouds
from a drowned sea,
                                               without

                             soundings

     she waded lily-deep


faded

        the lilies are budding now.         

tick

orange roses still wake into spread
the rosemary, some bushes high as my hip,

sway their wet heads
low, dripping tight blue blooms,

his lips hang trembling,
mouth sore from shaking

soil hard with weeds, heat,
chemical words, bitter sawdust

windows garish, light gone
fallow, reflecting

the rain, impressionistic
distance, a mud made of dust

the maples still weep red
soft, small, saturated

our thin arms, sallow, wet,
still reach for the plow—              

Arianne True (Choctaw, Chickasaw) is a queer poet and folk artist from Seattle. She teaches and mentors young poets around Puget Sound and moonlights as a copyeditor. Arianne has received fellowships from Jack Straw, the Hugo House, and Artist Trust, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She was recently the Seattle Repertory Theater’s first Native Artist-in-Residence.

ISSN 2472-338X
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