Still Life Morrow

Abstract

48 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2017 Moving to a New Classroom by Laura Da’ That slick envelope of developed film is tumbled in a storage closet next to old seating charts and a stale granola bar in foil. In one of the frames, faces are locked in astonishment. Having sighted a Killer Whale, Neah Bay June 2004 is written on the back of the photograph in the tender filigree of eighth-grade cursive. My first year teaching, on a field-trip nature hike, I pointed down between two cedar-spiked sea stacks. An orca’s black-and-white silhouette sashayed across the waves, looking buoyant and playful as a toddler in bathwater. Whale-skin erudition; mathematical wonder of the united gaze. Juvenile orca floating under Cape Flattery. Laura Da’ is a poet and public schoolteacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her first book, Tributaries, won the American Book Award. Still Life Morrow by Tacey M. Atsitty I think they know – about every leaf I’d catch to peel from my tongue. It spoke to how good I was at being alone. This morning I sit in the still kitchen, rued by autumn passing me outside. Still, I cut into my omelet. “Turn off the static,” my therapist says. “Taste what you swallow.” Inside, I feel water burst from the baby bellas. I wish I were staring at a still life, a bowl of cactus fruit maybe, or rotted watermelon, and not this wintry scene of the road I’ve just taken. In it, rises our breath to the lone mountains, as layers of rain gloss us abundantly. Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné, is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People) from Cove, Arizona. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared in many publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (UNM Press, 2018). cover feature new native writing ...