Psychic Fair

Abstract

TrishSalah Psychic Fair for Noel Knockwood Spring 1983. You probably won't remember. You were working a gig on the outskirts of town. A man, not much older than I am now. MicMac in the colonial way of spelling. Reading Auras. Spelling calling casting. Sagebrush from California, Or—something, scented your tent... I think you wore plaid, braids. I think you had his name, but as a teenager with issues Who wasn't and isn't a... ? I didn't see very far Beyond my large and, I know now, attractive nose. I'm not sure how you knew. I mean, I "know" about Two-Spirits, thirds, and fourths, I've read the anthropologists, and know some folks now Who've talked to the grandmothers, ones who can say.... But Mi'kmaq man, the church was forced on your folk for a long time now. But what you saw, what you said. It fixed me, still, and I was thrown, known. Okay, well, It could have been the smudge, of my eyeliner, Feminist Studies37, no. 2 (Summer 2011). © 2011 by Trish Salah 329 330 TrishSalah It could have been my pointy toed boots. Was I wearing a skirt? How could you have known? No one else did or said, or Before you and your medicine. It doesn't matter. Your gift was a curse of freeing, dread and hope Of what I already knew. You saw my—medicine? And for years the way I would tell the tale, Mangled my thanks, it's some settler gothic thing, even now: I met this old Indian man, and he told me, Telling, he made me, with a word, a story, this girl. ...