National Poetry Month : Aja Couchois Duncan,

from Consanguinity ·map

 

 

days spent beneath the protection of a cypress grove
while rain falls from the fissure in the sky
as if something high up in the atmospheres has kicked heaven
open and gravity is drawing it back down
the doe has ceased to hear or feel the rain
barely moving, she begins to blend with the serpentine earth
her fur slightly green, her legs threaded with crysotile
only poisonous when the fibrous fractures are dispersed
the doe does not kick her hooves or nuzzle
the rough bark of the tree
she does not move
only stillness can end
the catastrophic
river of water
dropping
bodies
one by one
back
to earth

 

 

 

this day
two birds still and trilling
mere inches apart

she is that far
from herself
or so she thinks
but the mirror produces
a reversed image
close enough to
fog the glass

she licks her lips
slips out her tongue
only to encounter
a beak
its bony lilt

surrender, she says
but doesn’t mean it

there is no seed
fruit or fish
that will ever
sate her 

 

 

 

 

Aja Couchois Duncan is a two spirit, (queer) social justice coach and capacity builder of Ojibwe, French and Scottish descent who lives on the ancestral and stolen land of the Coastal Miwok people. Her debut collection, Restless Continent (Litmus Press, 2016) was selected by Entropy Magazine as one of the best poetry collections of 2016 and awarded the California Book Award for Poetry in 2017. In 2020, Sweet Land—a collaborative opera project which brought together composers Raven Chacon and Du Yun, librettists Aja Couchois Duncan and Douglas Kearney, and co-directors Cannupa Hanska Luger and Yuval Sharon—was produced in the Los Angeles State Historic Park to critical acclaim and named the Best Opera of 2020 by the Music Critics Association of North America. Her second book, Vestigial was published by Litmus Press in 2021. When not writing or working, Aja can be found running the west Marin hills with her Australian Cattle Dog Dublin, training with horses, or weaving small pine needle baskets. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and a variety of other degrees and credentials to certify her as human. Great Spirit knew it all along.