☀ What Sparks Poetry: Erin Marie Lynch on "8.5 x 11"

Interesting story. . .

written in red ink
at the top of my
mother's paper

   . . .Is this even true?

1972—Eighth Grade American Indian Unit

  even then, her faultless cursive
  recounting her father‘’s recounting
of Sitting Bull’s murder
today we learn
to say who we are
in Zoom Dakota class

tiles enclose faces

COMMAND + SHIFT + A
  unmute

shapes move through mouths

Damákhota
Oregon hemátaŋhaŋ ye
Tuktédaŋ omáwapi šni ye

afterward I forget everything

    walking the dog past beautiful
people lifting weights, stretching
by the bronze bust of Leif Erikson

glistening populace of the open field
shadows keep casual intimacy
deepen in overlaps

Homework: what is all the information you can give someone about yourself
   and what would your introduction sound like?
half-second misaligned
perfecting an echo's echo

but my legs are   in running shorts and my face is    on dating apps and I check the box for
on government forms ergo I am in any residual sense phenotypically slash culturally
slash in terms of my rearing as well as    in case of receipt of cultural or academic capital
from the largely establishment that is to say I am    to any glance   passing or otherwise

   in the documentary
   a fisherman's voice-over

   we are living out long-term genocide

  he slits a salmon
  points to good flesh

the terms of ness are long-term and to be is endpoint of every room that has included me
for being meekly    and legibly

   "finally, there was the groundless shame of the inadvertent
   impostor" wrote Adrian Piper

   (she looked to the gaze but wasn't )

if I wrote in on paper
it would look like