My Brother, My Wound
He was calling in the bulls from the street.They came like a dark river,a flood of chest and hoof.Everything moving, under, splinter. Hookedtheir horns though the walls. Light hummedthe holes like yellow jackets. My mouthwas a nest torn empty.Then, he was at the table.Then, in the pig's jaws.He was not hungry. He was stop.He was bad apple. He was choking.So I punched my fists against his stomach.Mars flew outand broke open or bloomed.How many small red eyes shut in that husk?He said, Look. Look. And they did.He said, Lift up your shirt. And I did.He slid his fork between my ribs.Yes, he sang. A Jesus side wound.It wouldn't stop bleeding.He reached insideand turned on the lamp.I never knew I was also a lamp, until the lightfell out of me, dripped down my thigh,flew up in me, caught in my throat like a canary.Canaries really means dogs, he said.He put on his shoes.You started this with your mouth, he pointed.Where are you going? I asked.To ride the Ferris wheel, he answered,and climbed inside me like a window.
Feature Date
- June 6, 2020
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Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press, and her second book, Postcolonial Love Poem, was published by Graywolf Press in March 2020. She is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, as well as a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded the Princeton Holmes National Poetry Prize and a Hodder Fellowship. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for the United States Artists, where she is an alumni of the Ford Fellowship. Diaz is Director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University and 2018 MacArthur Fellow.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
“Diaz’s collection is no doubt one of the most important poetry releases in years, one to applaud for its considerable demonstration of skill, its resistance to dominant perspectives and its light wrought of desire.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“With tenacious wit, ardor, and something I can only call magnificence, Diaz speaks of the consuming need we have for one another. This is a book for any time, but especially a book for this time. These days, and who knows for how long, we can only touch a trusted small number of people. Diaz brings depth and resonance to the fact that this has always been so. Be prepared to journey down a wild river.”
—Louise Erdrich
“This is a breakthrough collection. In a world where nothing feels so conservative as a love poem, Diaz takes the form and smashes it to smithereens, building something all her own. A kind of love poem that can allow history and culture and the anguish of ancestors to flow through and around the poet as she addresses her beloved.”
—John Freeman, Literary Hub
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