naming the namer

names hold power - poets have often been called Namers in their archetypal work, in that they work with words, definitions, and the essence of things. in trying to work out my own identity, I first at what I call myself, and second at what others call me. This is a short piece based on that....
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youngin', darlin'
tenderfoot
cries-like-a-girl, bookworm, fluatista, little one, fairy feet, eats-like-a-bird—-

((I wonder what that would mean now as I no longer fly fearful fleet as a 6 year olds are—still feather boned but not picking at my food and keeping to the flock – I tear into meat with a raptor’s beak and I am all eyes, I see, I devour.
I keep more
to myself.

Skillet, Kestrel
Tiger T-Sue T-Bird sweetling Teresita, treesaw
sweet pea, sweetheart, traysa, tres, tracer, Terese

longlegs, browneyes
sickie
sweet girl
angel, mine.

Blog Blaghs

The view of my hometown from our cattle ranch, complete with our calvy cows and green hills in the foreground. On Saturday I'll be leaving this-- the rural-burb--for the big city....School year, here I come...

I still can't get this blog fixed the way I want it, blargh... And I still feel awkward in my writing--fumbling, unworthy--and I wonder if this is where I'm supposed to be, the "blogosphere". I need to find some disability blogs, get my blog feed set-up, upload some photography, go to some slams, freewrite on the nature nurturing and my weird-ass dreams...

In the world of RA: I began Humira this week--a bi-weekly anti-protein injection. The protein attatches to cells involved inflammation, so ideally all those levels should go down in the next three months. Holy jesus, injecting yourself with this shit hurts. Hurts so bad I took 5 seconds to inject 40 milligrams. Four hours later I have terrible pain in my right hip (hips are unaffected by the arthritis), and my right leg starts to go numb. It turns out you're supposed to take two whole minutes to do the injection. Say what?! My mind is blown. So that's going to become a bi-weekly wednesday ritual: take the Humira out of the fridge, soothing music, lavender tea....

Recap: That's plaquenil (antimalarial), methotrexate (chemotherapy), and Humira (TNF Inhibitor), plus Aruveydic digestive formula (to get rid of am) and nasya (anti-anxiety/Vata balancer). I quit taking the birth control because I don't need it (and hopefully won't in the next year or so) and DUH. I'm anemic. Getting my period four times a year was probably a good thing.

Coming soon.... An awkward racism/classism encounter at a Japanese restaurant, and an excerpt from the piece I plan to submit to Belevue...

(Okay, I still feel awkward. AWKWARD. Maybe it's the glasses. Maybe it's because two people read this. Maybe my brain has forgotten who to write. BLAGH. *headwallheadwallheadwall*)

North Prayer

I give thanks for the fish my man-family greedily steals; far over the limit though not beyond what we can eat. They gloat over sizes and granddaddy stories, whine about aching feet and I know we could have afforded another meat for our supper, but even if our bellies are filled their souls will only be stilled by the rhythm of the fly rod, the focus of the deep pool and softly-loud stream. Is that not need? I ask the corn mother, and yes, she says, men with unhappy day jobs and concrete between their toes seek to be gods on the weekend pursual of innocent bucks, the rocky silence of wilderness and brash backslappings of boys.

Where else can we be men? they ask, and sky father answers, All places under me—but they do not hear. This thankless ungrounded society deludes them, tells them men take and take and power over and beat down and conquer, and they carry this harsh unhonoring with them, from degrading their mates to chasing the antelope until their aging bodies throb, then go back to the cabin full of cheap brews and steaks that died afraid, where they will scrape out their gut-souls with more granddaddy stories and feigned fireside anger. Men? I ask, and as His bearded breeze sweeps through the aspens, they quake with Her laughter, they carry away my whispered prayers of gratitude as I stand by the tail-gate, enraptured by rainbow scales and cold eyes trapped in a Ziploc—brown trout, fingerlings, rainbows, people earth-darker than I say that their wisdom comes from always knowing which direction home is.

Even in my father’s oil-stained hands the hooked trout twists strong as a snake, as a bent willow, seeking the water, the upstream. My boy-family is as out of place in cities, in Wal-Marts and strip malls, but where is their fight to seek the ground? Ten minutes ago this fish was slipping through the stream beside me, unaware, and now lies on my plate floured and browned. I never enjoyed eating fish, and I still don’t. When they take fine-boned meat within themselves, what do the men-boys learn, I ask? Plastic, uncaring, downpayments and empty screens—how much more can my father take, how does he keep his gills fluttering so long away from the hills and the oak? With this, the trees murmur through mud in my jeans, the wind coaxes answers from my creek-washed hair. And I give thanks, for warm muscle sliding down my throat, for my father’s fumblings, for the quaking aspen, for the lies that drive us to seek the intensity of these long hauls and payless days, this condensed, desperate forest loving.