My river was once unseparated. Was Colorado. Red-
fast flood. Able to take
anything it could wet—in a wild rush—
all the way to Mexico.
Now it is shattered by fifteen dams
over one-thousand four-hundred and fifty miles,
pipes and pumps
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poet
Natalie Diaz
Natalie Diaz is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). She teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts Low Residency MFA Program in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
by this poet
poem
2015
poem
2015
I have gazed the black flower blooming
her animal eye. Gacela oscura. Negra llorona.
Along the clayen banks I follow her-astonished,
gathering grief’s petals she lets fall like horns.
Why not now go toward the things I love?
Like Jacob’s angel, I touched the garnet of her wrist,
and
poem
2012
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said, O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.
He wants to kill me, he told her