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    Streaming


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      STREAMING

      OTHER BOOKS BY ALLISON ADELLE HEDGE COKE

      POETRY

      Blood Run

      Dog Road Woman

      Off-Season City Pipe

      MEMOIR

      Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer

      ANTHOLOGY EDITOR

      Effigies

      Effigies II

      Sing: Poetry of the Indigenous Americas

      For the first year of release, a free download of the Streaming album

      recordings with Rd Klā is available with the purchase of this book.

      Enter the code: fH6k7NmR at soundtrax.com to receive.

      It is also available for purchase. Please see rdkla.com

      or allisonadellehedgecoke.com for information.

      Copyright © 2014 Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

      Cover and book design by Linda Koutsky

      Cover photo © Melissa Groo (melissagroo.com)

      Author photo © Shane Brown

      Coffee House Press books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, cbsd.com or (800) 283-3572. For personal orders, catalogs, or other information, write to: info@coffeehousepress.org.

      Coffee House Press is a nonprofit literary publishing house. Support from private foundations, corporate giving programs, government programs, and generous individuals helps make the publication of our books possible. We gratefully acknowledge their support in detail in the back of this book.

      Visit us at coffeehousepress.org.

      LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CIP INFORMATION

      Hedge Coke, Allison Adelle.

      [Poems. Selections]

      Streaming / Allison Adelle Hedge Coke.

      pages cm

      ISBN 978-1-56689-375-6 (paperback)

      ISBN 978-1-56689-383-1 (ebook)

      I. Title.

      PS3553.O4366A6 2014

      811’.54—DC23

      2014008087

      FOR MY MOTHER

      FOR OUR WORLD

      PRELUDE

      A Time

      I NAVIGATION

      Streaming

      Drunk Butterflies

      Eddy Lines

      Waiting for Light

      Platte Mares

      Ted’s Cranes

      Philosophy

      Summer Fruit

      II BREAKING COVER

      Heroes

      Pando/Pando

      Swarming

      Hibakusha

      Steel

      Story

      Searching Ground

      1973

      Solar Flares

      First Morning

      Barrio Tricentenario, Plaza de Banderas

      Niño de la Calle

      Campos

      Dublin Crossing

      Was Morning Call

      Hatchlings

      Peanut Pond

      Carcass

      MAY SUITE

      Weatherband/FM/AM

      We Were in a World

      In the Year 513 PC

      Twistin’ the Night Away

      III WHERE WE HAVE BEEN

      Taxonomy

      Sudden Where

      Striking Chords

      Measuring Up

      Then

      Against the Barrel

      Dust: Dad’s Days

      Lefties

      Wealth

      Kaolin

      Rainmaker

      She Shakes Chilies from Her Hair

      Cotton

      Indigo

      Tobacco Rise

      The Wailing Room

      Shapings

      America, I Sing You Back

      IV WHERE IT ENDS

      The Last House Creeley Left

      Reduction

      Breathing

      Burn

      CODA

      Harp Strings

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      PRELUDE

      A TIME

      elegy for my mother

      The problem—

      it’s not been written yet, the omens:

      the headless owl, the bobcat struck,

      the red wolf where she could not be.

      None of it done and yet it’s over.

      Nothing yet

      of night when she called me closer

      asked me to bring her crow painting

      to stay straight across from her feet

      so she could waken into it,

      remember her friend.

      Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder

      still watching over her

      just as the mountain had done

      throughout her Alberta childhood.

      The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids,

      her figure in flaming pyre.

      The cards, the notes, the tasks

      the things undone, not done

      and she with us faraway

      as this has always been and ever

      will continue.

      We meet we leave

      we meld and vaporize from whatever

      it was that held us human

      in this life.

      And all the beautiful things

      that lead our thoughts and give us reason

      remain despite the leaving and

      all I know is what you know

      when it is over said and done

      it was a time

      and there was never enough of it.

      I

      NAVIGATION

      for life

      STREAMING

      for Sherwin & Travis

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      kettle

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      beans, cornfield

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      Once, we walk long grass into weave

      pacing stem wrappings

      in concentric circling;

      southwise sans temporal sway,

      beat to counts, not ticks

      in a dream where time poses as dust,

      where echo-wrinkles reverberate

      consciousness signals against

      savannahs—

      Sandhills overhead, their chortling

      carries snow geese back to councils.

      In this streaming, seasons shift

      far past distressed unravelings,

      where grasses seed sparseness

      commingle alongside wrinkle weavings, time,

      signaling light shocks spreading fingerlike

      across blue/white world—

      Grass warp, weave, entwined, danced,

      making mattress, woven mat

      step crossing step, push/push,

      making sure this place

      brings matted dreamtime under

      Dog Road, Darkening Land,

      Cygnus, Swan, Northern Cross

      echoing light/dark Albireo dreaming.

      Albeit night is with or without sun.

      Circles align whether trampling

      long stem beds over cracked earth,

      into baited sun-whirled worlds,

      whether north/cold, with or without light,

      needling shafts through coarse indigos,

      like velveteen, corded skeins, geese, yarn—

      Somewhere woven; north of quipu hemp,

      hemp laid moundwork blueprint, twined some

      where north of periodical cicadas, mock locusts

      now shivering night free with streaming song.

      Where light brings split shell husk, dry fly

      appearances under loosed locust ravished

      leaf, ’neath not New Forest, but sweating

      three-year Apache cicada who daylight

      cannot swelter, no, cannot swelter nor

      swing out across summer, cast into

      swarming grasshoppers, winged, leaping

      ’neath cicada droning lovesongs, daylight

      unimpeded desert caught in bleak recede
    d

      motion, overlapping, each trio member

      keeping transparent winged vigilance.

      Another cicada, here, north, now

      prefers nightly monophony,

      meatier female brings dreaming

      tween utensil sticks we draw to tongue,

      her veined wings set aside, soft burst

      oral tradition, nourishment, medicine.

      Three, thirteen, seventeen annuals

      canopy contralto over unknown biomes,

      under night waiting to break day

      swallow it whole, lid shut, Leonids

      rain over the closure, repeat passages,

      stream, portal skipping, vortex threading,

      weaving textural, lingual suffix, to stem/blade.

      Some of us flew them, cicadas/Leonids,

      riding backbump, flying—

      Some of us squirmed underworld with larvae, slick

      retracing lives, Moon-Eyed passers, cavern travelers.

      Some of us strictly scored trees,

      edging along bark stream.

      Some of us called night/day

      for union after splitting

      our backs open, crawling out into light, flying—

      But now it’s winter,

      first fire forms stone mouths,

      whispers, go in there we’re with you

      alongside, trio here, trio women.

      Wherein, the waking gives acumen

      already over, somewhere

      further along stream east/south,

      perpetual echo-wrinkling,

      cicada songlike field wave

      light/dark wrinkle, weave, here

      corded skirts, woven petticoats

      ’neath mulberry bark skirts—

      Sending us back where women

      stood spearing, yellow poplar canoes

      mooring, mooring cold water,

      moving upstream when hot houses

      gave them up, hoisted,

      sent them above ground,

      back to waters, thirsty, hungry.

      Waterskipping spider spinning

      fire/firing clay, clay painted

      on poplar trunks, fired,

      top to bottom, released to sail waters.

      Released to sail, placed in tutsi bowl,

      slung upon her back,

      lightning fired, sycamore clothed,

      fire, furnishings for home:

      hot cicada, yellow jacket soup,

      strawberry jam/nectar.

      Here, in the cylindrical and spherical,

      in the curvilinear space

      its echo-wrinkle reverberations,

      discernments, definitive dissonance;

      here, intuition/memory intersect,

      prophesy source into beingness,

      we in certain presence—being—at all times.

      On a river of variable stream, channel flow,

      confluence, departures give wellsprings,

      condition broad throughways,

      water comes, proper placement,

      nourishes life, causes sustenance. Come fruition,

      informed by being, by elemental colliding

      intersections within these planes,

      within swell of source throughout elements, earth,

      animal, plant: animate, inanimate.

      Swelling echoes moving in seven directions,

      spherical in a sense of reverb actions and response

      in waves of knowns we perceive, collide into,

      multidimensional, the sense of time, space, place—

      the experiential impressed by a familiar spiritual sense.

      A girl eyes next turn,

      gives melody to droning.

      Caught her lostness with hemp skirt,

      traveled down mountain,

      Bluest Ridge, like fire from leaf to root,

      like ice now mooring ’neath glacial melt,

      now impending, lest we continue

      along this way, newly invoked,

      along this burn, stream, somewhere

      between hummingbird/sloth,

      between here/now, when/then,

      vibration strum fissure,

      variable stream, channel flow—

      until we all come tumbling, find melody, until

      we drone nightly, thrum—

      Impressions strummed today

      incite future impulsion,

      create past prophecy.

      Get it?

      Along an echo-wrinkle in existence

      your presence permeates swaying.

      Cries:

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      kettle

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      beans, cornfield

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      kettle

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      beans, cornfield

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      kettle

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      beans, cornfield

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      Swaying permeates presence, your

      existence, in echo-wrinkle, along an

      entry, chickadee messenger, cheeping

      this way, don’t turn back.

      Sloth carries hummingbird

      alongside perpetual echo-wrinkling,

      cicada songlike field wave

      light/dark wrinkle, weave, here

      corded skirts, woven petticoats

      ’neath mulberry bark skirts—

      Clacking turtle hulls

      shake world back into sequence.

      Southwise turning

      magnetic field migration.

      Hummingbird fathoms navigation

      along lekking glasswing routes,

      sometimes monarchs, edge on milkweed

      munch down Mississippi Valley

      daisy fleabane, hackberry, willow.

      Like silkworms

      ceiling coved, mulberry leaved, cocooned

      then boiled away to entrap threadpoint, unravel,

      ravel, spin, wind, capture beauty in cloth

      woven way east, here cotton carries life,

      its weevils ever after emanating loss,

      now monarch opens case, cleaves, light

      enters day, moving waters, streams

      from pit to wingtip, extending—shaking.

      Cicadas droning, girl singing,

      magnetic reason cranes

      float thermals, far past reason,

      high in orbit break away in eight points,

      approach in fours, return, approach,

      like horse dance, for innocence, mares there

      airbound approach, approach, dance

      in channels, pathways, roads,

      far below moonlight shimmers

      sends locust tree her dressings.

      Wear them, Sister, now your beauty

      petticoats, mulberry—open-backed cicada—

      Some of us flew them, cicadas/Leonids,

      riding backbump, flying—

      Once, we walk long grass into weave

      pacing stem wrappings

      in concentric circling

      southwise sans temporal sway,

      beat to counts, not ticks

      in a dream where time poses as dust,

      where echo-wrinkles reverberate

      consciousness signals against—

      a dream echoing light/dark, some of us flew them.

      Albireo dreaming— streaming.

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      kettle

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      beans, cornfield

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      Yah,re,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      Ya,yan,e,tih

      kettle

      Yah,r
    e,sah Ya,yan,quagh,ke

      beans, cornfield

      Yat,o,regh,shas,ta

      I am hungry

      DRUNK BUTTERFLIES

      Butterflies inebriated, sloshed

      spiraling upward from pools of water

      holding fermented foliage we

      passed by while canoeing the Neuse.

      Orange, white, yellow, blue, black, brown

      speckled, swallow-tailed, patterned,

      mottled, webbed flash and quiver,

      fluttering fine, fly, pit painted lady mating ritual.

      Wrapping shyness with wing, undercover, under

      folding blanket over lover.

      Liquid courage emboldens beginnings, above

     

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