NAVAJO CODE TALKER NOW AT REST

by Lavinia Kumar

The New York Times, October 20, 2024

armament ……animal ………...Navajo animal name

bomber……….buzzard ……….jay-sho

fighter plane…hummingbird …da-he-tih-hi

battleship ……whale …………lo-tso

destroyer……..shark…………..ca-lo.

 

Navajo John Kinsel lived 107 years,

decades since he was Code Talker

the Navajo Code unbreakable, critical 

to Iwo Jima Marine victory.

 

He returned, his wound healing—

to his grandfather who’d happy-cried,

to a welcome ceremony—

returned to the Navajo Nation—

received Purple Heart after 43 years,

Congressional Medal 12 years later.

 

his memory to inspire generations

his spirit resting in peace.

Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is a reprinting of her short book Beauty. Salon. Art. 

1+1+1+1+1+3+1...= 120,000 AND COUNTING

by Peter Witt

ADAM ZYGLIS, THE BUFFALO NEWS, NY

120, 000 U.S. deaths
a big number,
about equal to the population of
Norman (OK),
Columbia (SC) or
Odessa (TX)

Does this get your attention?

To understand 120, 000
let's break it down
to 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1...
you get the idea,

with each 1 representing a life,
a real person,
someone from our community,
someone's family member.

1 was Yu Lihua, an important
Chinese American writer -
wrote mainly late at night,
smoked True menthol cigarettes.

1 was Valentina Blackhorse,
administrative assistant
for the Navajo Nation,
dreamed of one day
leading her tribe.
Family now raises her
one year old daughter.

1 was James Mahoney,
ICU doctor in New York,
cared for patients
through the HIV/AIDS epidemic,
9/11, the swine flu.
Due to retire
stayed onto help,
he saw it as his duty.

Another 1 was Judy Wilson-Griffen,
clinical nurse who cared
for nursing black women, helping
bring future generations
into the community of St. Louis.

Peter Bainum was 1,
aerospace engineer, who taught
at Howard university for 30 years.
sending students onto NASA
and the aerospace industry.

3 were Nicky, John, Leslie Leake,
Nicky planning wedding,
John the family cutup,
Leslie, dotting mother,
grandmother, great grandmother -
died within 20 days of each other
in Washington, D.C.

and not least was 1 Paul Cary
lifelong paramedic and firefighter,
drove 27 hours from Colorado
to the New York epicenter.
He was carried home in a succession
of ambulances, before his colleagues said
we have the watch from here.

1+ 1+ 1+1+1+3+1 until we have 100,000,
the count goes on,
...1 + 1 + 1+1...

120, 000 is a big number
made up of little numbers,
each of whom
we should never forget.


Author’s note: Life stories were taken from "Faces of the Dead," The Washington Post, May 28, 2020.

Peter Witt is a retired University Professor and 2020 Poet Laureate for the International Poetics Foundation.  

LATE NIGHT IN A SMOKY BAR AN OLD SWASTIKA DRINKS WHISKEY WITH THE GODDESS ISIS

by Kit Loney

You say a terrorist stole your name? I hear you, sister. Back in the day I was easy in my skin, passed among the creatures of the earth like a fine breeze. I was whirling dervish. Pelican diving. Windmill. Showed travelers the way to Buddhist temples. Would appear on kimono sleeves in sky-blue silk brocade to gather good fortune. Faced left in Sanskrit to juggle dots and dance on pointed toes. Man, those were the days. The Navajo would invite me to kneel on woven carpets for sacred healing chants. I was earth, air, fire, and water. north, west, south, and east. Then one day I’m grabbed from behind, knocked out cold. In fog of fever dreams I’m something small and lethal, like a pistol, dread burning up red from the tail of my spine. Wake up decades later. Splitting headache. Hands covered in blood. These days the Japanese kids call me Mangi, some hashtag to hip as if that Hitler nightmare never happened. But sister, I‘m still covered in scars, still shaking. Oh God! What have I done? And this new tide of angry men with their hands clenching my every arm. No ocean on earth is deep enough. Sister, help me, please!

Kit Loney comes to poetry from a career in visual arts. Her poems have appeared in Prime Number Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Fall Lines, Emrys Journal, Kakalak, Yemassee, Qarrtsiluni, Waccamaw, One, and Poetry East. In 2012 she received the Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship from the SC Academy of Authors.

THE CIRCLE OF DEAD HORSES

by Pamela Stewart

CAMERON, Ariz. -- Off a northern Arizona highway surrounded by pastel-colored desert is one of the starkest examples of drought's grip on the American Southwest: Nearly 200 dead horses surrounded by cracked earth, swirling dust and a ribbon of water that couldn't quench their thirst. Flesh exposed and in various stages of decomposition, the carcasses form a circle around a dry watering hole sunken in the landscape … According to the Navajo Nation, 191 horses died of natural causes. "These animals were searching for water to stay alive. In the process, they unfortunately burrowed themselves into the mud and couldn't escape because they were so weak," Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez said in a statement Thursday. A grim photo posted by the Navajo Nation shows the horses, many of them in mud up to their thighs and even their necks. —CBS/AP, May 6, 2018

Each day they are deepened by dust
soon shrunk to no color.

Once the horses slept standing up.

Oh, the stars say, another circle of dead horses!
Another stillness of horses

that didn’t fall in war with manes
unbraided by fire.

These horses, nine of them, drowned
in cages of dust—oracular drought—
no suction of damp, nothing left
to sip for the blowfly.

Only a hand lifted by the mind’s eye
could smooth a neck, lift towards
the still cloudless sky
to be caught between rage and blessing.

A circle of wild dead horses—chapter one.

Pamela (Jody) Stewart is the author of 6 full-length volumes of poems and a number of chapbooks, the most recent being Just Visiting (Grey Suit Editions, London, 2014). She lives on a farm in western Massachusetts.

NIZHONI, A YOUNG NAVAJO

by William Roland Rozar

Image source: Indian Children's Program

                                 April is Child Abuse Prevention Month 
                                        --Navajo-Hopi Observer, April 22, 2014


  This is my poem
                              This is my song
    I beat it on my drum
    My father beats me everyday
    He says it will make me strong
    And that someday I will pass my strength
    On to my children
    Who I will make strong.
                              But I just hurt,
    All the time,
                              And want to run away
    To leave and never return,
                              That also hurts,
    I must find a place
                                Where no one
    Can touch me.
                                This is my song
    I beat it on my drum.


William Roland Rozar is a poet who lives and writes in Eugene, Oregon.