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
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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
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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