Louise Erdrich - Original Fire - Selected and New Poems

from me, then, poor mad horse,

except by reaching the gate?

With his old body burnt, Potchikoo existed in his spiritual flesh. Yet having been to the other side of life and back, he wasn’t sure where he belonged. Sometimes he found his heaven with Josette, sometimes he longed for the pasture gate. He became certain that the end of his living days was near, and he felt sorry for himself. He was also very jealous when it came to Josette, and convinced that old men were in love with her, just waiting for him to croak. Therefore, he decided to have himself stuffed and placed in a corner of their bedroom, where he could keep an eye on his widow. He told her of his plan.

“That way, you’ll never forget me,” he crooned in a pathetic voice.

“I’ll never forget you anyway,” said Josette. “Who the hell could?”

Potchikoo sought out a taxidermist in a neighboring town, the sort of person who mounted prize walleyes and the heads of buck deer.

“What about me?” said Potchikoo.

“What about you?” said the taxidermist.

“I’d like to get stuffed,” said Potchikoo.

“You must be dead first,” said the professional.

Oh yes, Potchikoo had forgotten this. Dead first. How to accomplish that? He considered this obstacle as he walked back to his house. Death. Potchikoo thought harder. At last, another option presented itself. Potchikoo decided to spend his golden years carving a lifelike statue of Potchikoo from the tall stump of an old oak tree right outside the door. Thus, once he was gone, he would watch over his love and present a forbidding sight to any akiwenzii who came to court her. Delighted with his notion, he began carving the very same day.

Months passed, a year passed, and Potchikoo’s statue became a legend. His project, begun in jealousy, became through rumor a sign of enormous grace. Divine light had descended on a habitual miscreant. Talk was that the old rascal had converted and was carving the Virgin Mary, or maybe Saint Joseph, or perhaps again the people’s own Blessed Kateri, right in his front yard. Potchikoo put up a canvas screen and worked there every single day. The wrenching sound of his chisel and the tapping of his mallet could be heard at any time, but he allowed no glimpse of his masterwork. He gave no interviews. Just kept working. Not until the statue was finished did he speak, and then it was only a notice of the unveiling. Which would occur on Easter morning.

At least a hundred people gathered after Mass, and another hundred were there already, waiting for the canvas that surrounded the statue to drop. Potchikoo was very pleased, and made a most glorious speech. The speech was long, and very satisfying to Potchikoo, and at the end of it he suddenly pulled the cord that held the curtain before the statue.

Silence. There was a lot of silence from the people. Potchikoo interpreted their silence as awe, and for sure, he felt the awe of it too. For the statue of himself had all of his unmistakable features, including the fantasy of his favorite part of himself at its most commanding. Those who were religious shook their heads and quickly left. Those who weren’t, but who had good taste, left as well. That left only the pagans with bad taste to admire what they saw, but that was enough for Potchikoo. He considered his project a success. During the years of quiet happiness that followed with Josette he never mislaid his hat, as there was a place to hang it right beside the door.

My four adopted sons in photographs

wear solemn black. Their faces comprehend

their mother’s death, an absence in a well

of empty noise, and Otto strange and lost.

Her name was Mary also, Mary Kröger.

Two of us have lived and one is gone.

Her hair was blond; it floated back in wings,

and still you see her traces in the boys:

bright hair and long, thin, knotted woman’s hands.

I knew her, Mary Kröger, and we were bosom friends.

All graves are shelters for our mislaid twins.

Otto was for many years her husband,

and that’s the way I always thought of him.

I nursed her when she sickened and the cure

fell through at Rochester. The healing bath

that dropped her temperature, I think, too fast.

I was in attendance at her death:

She sent the others out. She rose and gripped my arm

and tried to make me promise that I’d care

for Otto and the boys. I had to turn away

as my own mother had when her time came.

How few do not return in memory

and make us act in ways we can’t explain.

I could not lie to ease her, living, dying.

All graves are full of such accumulation.

And yet, the boys were waiting in New York

to take the first boat back to Otto’s folks

in Germany, prewar, dark powers were at work,

and Otto asked me on the westbound bus

to marry him. I could not tell him no—

We help our neighbors out. I loved him though

It took me several years to know I did

from that first time he walked in to deliver

winter food. Through Father Adler’s kitchen,

he shouldered half an ox like it was bread

and looked at me too long for simple greeting.

This is how our live complete themselves,

as effortless as weather, circles blaze

in ordinary days, and through our waking selves

they reach, to touch our true and sleeping speech.

So I took up with Otto, took the boys

and watched for them, and made their daily bread

from what the grocer gave them in exchange

for helping him. It’s hard to tell you how

they soon became so precious I got sick

from worry, and woke up for two months straight

and had to check them, sleeping, in their beds

and had to watch and see each breathe or move

before I could regain my sleep again.

All graves are pregnant with our nearest kin.

“Her fear was for her child. Searching all around, she saw the footprints of an enormous frog and with them, the tracks of the little dog, as if he had been dragged along on his paws. She knew then that it was the Frog Woman who had stolen her baby and knew by the tracks that the little dog had tried to hold back the cradle board with his teeth.”

— from “Wampum Hair,” a story told by Nawaquay-geezhik (Charles Kawbawgam)

1 Transformation

My husband was a prince who kissed me

until my eyes bulged and my skin

melted to a green film on my bones.

My mouth split my face

and I croaked, take me, oh take me.

So I was, deeper

into my startling new body.

As I sank back onto the wet springs

of my haunches, as I powerfully gathered

my tongue unfolded in a blur,

a sticky lasso,

and plucked a fly from his lapel—

my last wifely act.

2 Control

At first, I hated this body,

my lung-thin skin, my temptress spots.

I wanted red silk and you gave me this!

Advantages — my bones are bendable straws

through which I drink sun,

golden yolk, food of inner life, heat, tremendous wish.

And there is night and the many voices

seething delirium

universal mirrors that are my eyes

implacable gold

What you change cannot love you.

I told him that. He kissed me anyway.

3 Origin

I was hungry, so the author of all things

gave me the flies of sorrow to eat.

Gave me the underslung heroic couplets

of a man’s breast to drink from.

Gave me the perfect nothing