Poem Post: Carrie House, "Sweet Grass"

[radiantfracture]

Content note: this poem is about processing the body of an animal.



Carrie House, "Sweet Grass"

One morning I, Navajo, wake up in Tiwa country
Friend from Taos Pueblo tells me they just killed a buffalo
Ten people are standing around, looking at each other
I watch the tractor's rear wheels come up and off the ground
The operator soon notices and lowers the buffalo
A man cuts the buffalo open
Everyone looks around at each other
Someone asks, "Who here can butcher?"
Someone says, "She can, she's a Navajo!"
I say, "Is this why he drove me up here?"
I ask for a wheelbarrow and a galvanized pail is placed down
I say, "This is for Minnie Mouse, where is a wheelbarrow or two?"
A wheelbarrow and several big buckets arrive
Two men open the cavity and I put my head and arms in
Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass
        I close my eyes and am overwhelmed by the sensation of being
       in a mother's womb
I carefully pull everything out and onto the wheelbarrow and buckets
Everything is huge; the heart, the kidneys, the book, the liver....
My pocket knife is the sharpest knife in the group
One evening I, Navajo, eat buffalo in Tiwa country


I love the way the speaker keeps repeating "buffalo," like she can't get enough of the word.

This feels beautifully paced to me, full of wry observation and joy and ceremony.

{rf}

Comments

[sabotabby]

This is really good.

[radiantfracture]

I like it so much -- it's a whole narrative and all this implied context and history condensed into 22 lines or so

[sovay]

Someone asks, "Who here can butcher?"
Someone says, "She can, she's a Navajo!"
I say, "Is this why he drove me up here?"

I love this, which feels just as real as the fact that she can do it.

[ranunculus]

What a lovely poem.
I like the feeling of size that the line about putting arms and head into the carcass brings. I also really like the pride in the fact that her knife is the sharpest there. That is well placed pride in keeping tools in top shape.

[radiantfracture]

I like the feeling of size that the line about putting arms and head into the carcass brings

Me too -- the sheer mass of a buffalo, and how no one was really prepared for it, because it's been so long -- the whole being this embodied experience of wonder and return. "Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass" is maybe my favorite line.

[full_metal_ox]

"Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass" is maybe my favorite line.

And one that reminds me of this account by the late Lakota medicine man John Fire Lame Deer:

In the old days we used to eat the guts of the buffalo, making a contest of it, two fellows getting hold of a long piece of intestines from opposite ends, starting chewing toward the middle, seeing who can get there first; that’s eating. Those buffalo guts, full of half-fermented, half-digested grass and herbs, you didn’t need any pills and vitamins when you swallowed those.

Which, in turn, recalls this quote from C.S. Lewis:

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.

Except that Lewis implicitly has in mind a white English child’s exotic Wild West fantasy—-here, House’s narrative stakes claim to the substance and significance and meat of her and her Tiwa hosts’ rightful buffalo, and of the mastery of traditional skills brought to its preparation.

[radiantfracture]

It feels like a small miracle.

(Is "the book" the lung?)

[malada]

"This is for Minnie Mouse"

I love that sarcasm.

[katuah]

oh, that is so good.

[radiantfracture]

I love it! And the poet seems supercool.

[larryhammer]

That is a most excellent poem. Thanks for sharing.

[radiantfracture]

delighted to co-enjoy.

[minoanmiss]

full_metal_ox sent me here and this is marvelous!

[radiantfracture]

I really love this poem!