Louise Erdrich: Original Fire: Selected and New Poems

Black steeples, black shavings of magnetized iron,

through which the moon parades her wastes,

drawing the fruit from the female body,

pulling water like blankets up other shores.

Then slowly the sky is colored in, the snow

falls evenly into the blackness of cisterns.

The steel wings fan open that will part us from each other

and the waves break and fall according to their discipline.

Breath that moves on the waters.

Small boat, small rower.

Who rips his own flesh down the seams and steps

forth flourishing the ax,

who chops down his own cross,

who straddles it,

who stares like a cat,

whose cheeks are the gouged blue of science,

whose torso springs out of wrung cloth

blazing ocher, blazing rust, whose blood

cools to black marble in his fist,

who makes his father kneel,

who makes his father say,

“You want her? Take her.”

Who rolls the stone from the entrance over his mother,

who pulls her veil out from under it,

who ties the stained cloth around his hips

and starts out,

walking toward Jerusalem

where they are gathering in his name.

The barred owls scream in the black pines,

searching for mates. Each night

the noise wakes me, a death

rattle, everything in sex that wounds.

There is nothing in the sound but raw need

of one feathered body for another.

Yet, even when they find each other,

there is no peace.

In Ojibwe, the owl is Kokoko, and not

even the smallest child loves the gentle sound

of the word. Because the hairball

of bones and vole teeth can be hidden

under snow, to kill the man who walks over it.

Because the owl looks behind itself to see you coming,

the vane of the feather does not disturb

air, and the barb is ominously soft.

Have you ever seen, at dusk,

an owl take flight from the throat of a dead tree?

Mist, troubled spirit.

You will notice only after

its great silver body has turned to bark.

The flight was soundless.

That is how we make love,

when there are people in the halls around us,

clashing dishes, filling their mouths

with air, with debris, pulling

switches and filters as the whole machinery

of life goes on, eliminating and eliminating

until there are just the two bodies

fiercely attached, the feathers

floating down and cleaving to their shapes.

I thought I saw him look my way and crossed

my breast before I could contain myself.

Beneath those glasses, thick as lead-barred windows,

his eyes ran through his head, the double barrels

of an old gun, sick on its load, the trigger held

in place by one thin metal bow.

Going toward the Catholic church, whose twin

white dunce caps speared the clouds for offerings,

we had to pass him on the poured stone bridge.

For nickels we could act as though we’d not

been offered stories. How these all turned out

we knew, each one, just how the river eats

within its course the line of reasoning.

He went, each morning, to the first confession.

The sulking curtains bit their lips behind him.

Still those in closer pews could hear the sweet

and limber sins he’d made up on the spot.

I saw a few consider, and take note—

procedural. They’d try them out at home.

And once, a windless August, when the sun

released its weight and all the crops were burned,

he kept watch as the river thickened. Land

grew visibly and reeked to either side,

till windowed hulks, forgotten death cars reared

where dark fish leapt, and gaped, and snatched the air.

On his journey through heaven and hell, Potchikoo had been a long time without sex. It was night when he finally got back home, and he could hardly wait to hold Josette in his arms. Therefore, after he had entered the house and crept up to her bed, the first words he uttered to his wife in greeting were, “Let’s pitch whoopee.”

Josette yelled and grabbed the swatter that she kept next to her bed to kill mosquitoes in the dark. She began to lambaste Potchikoo until she realized who it was, and that this was no awful dream.

Then they lay down in bed and had no more thoughts.

Afterward, lying there happily, Potchikoo was surprised to find that he was still passionate. They began to make love again, and still again, and over and over. At first Josette returned as good as Potchikoo gave her, but after a while it seemed that the more he made love, the more need he felt and the more heat he gave off. He was unquenchable fire.

Finally, Josette fell asleep, and let him go on and on. He was so glad to be alive again that he could never remember, afterward, how many times he had sex that night. Even he lost count. But when he woke up late the next day, Potchikoo felt a little strange, as though there was something missing. And sure enough, there was.

When Potchikoo looked under the covers, he found that his favorite part of himself was charred black and thin as a burnt twig.

After he had several adventures, the potato boy took the name Potchikoo and decided to try married life.

I’ll just see what it’s like for a while, he thought, and then I’ll start wandering again.

How very inexperienced he was!

He took the train to Minneapolis to find a wife and as soon as he got off he saw her. She was a beautiful Indian girl standing at the door to a little shop where they sold cigarettes and pipe tobacco. How proud she looked! How peaceful. She was so lovely that she made Potchikoo shy. He could hardly look at her.

Potchikoo walked into the store and bought some cigarettes. He lit one up and stuck it between the beautiful woman’s lips. Then he stood next to her, still too shy to look at her, until he smelled smoke. He saw that she had somehow caught fire.

“Oh, I’ll save you!” cried Potchikoo.

He grabbed his lady love and ran with her to the lake, which was, handily, across the street. He threw her in. At first he was afraid she would drown but soon she floated to the surface and kept floating away from Potchikoo. This made him angry.

“Trying to run away already!” he shouted.

He leaped in to catch her. But he had forgotten that he couldn’t swim. So Potchikoo had to hang on to his wooden sweetheart while she drifted slowly all the way across the lake. When they got to the other side of the lake, across from Minneapolis, they were in wilderness. As soon as the wooden girl touched the shore she became alive and jumped up and dragged Potchikoo out of the water.

“I’ll teach you to shove a cigarette between my lips like that,” she said, beating him with her fists, which were still hard as wood. “Now that you’re my husband you’ll do things my way!”

That was how Potchikoo met and married Josette. He was married to her all his life. After she made it clear what she expected of her husband, Josette made a little toboggan of cut saplings and tied him upon it. Then she decided she never wanted to see Minneapolis again. She wanted to live in the hills. That is why she dragged Potchikoo all the way back across Minnesota to the Turtle Mountains, where they spent all the years of their wedded bliss.

It was terrible to have burnt his pride and joy down to nothing. It was terrible to have to face the world, especially Josette, without it. Potchikoo put his pants on and sat in the shade to think. But not until Josette left for daily Mass, and he was alone, did Potchikoo have a good idea.