My dead father’s name next to my living mothersYou went further back into the cemeteryThere where so many lies remain lost to winterThere with the named and the namelessIt was snowing on the monumentsAll horizons packed with cloud coverbodiesSome of us left in the vehicleswe came inSome became some final gestureof departure’s sun borne reflectbehind auto glassheat blowing feeling back into faceIt was snowing on the monumentsEven in the warmth of an engine turning overYou must forget how we came to this placehow we leave
It Was Snowing on the Monuments
Gordon Henry
Feature Date
- March 20, 2024
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“It Was Snowing on the Monuments” from SPIRIT MATTERS: by Gordon Henry.
Published by Holy Cow! Press on June 14, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Gordon Henry.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
An Anishinabe poet and novelist, Gordon Henry, Jr. is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota. His poetry has been published in anthologies such as Songs From This Earth On Turtle’s Back: Contemporary American Indian Poetry (1983) and Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First Native American Writers(1994). His novel The Light People (1994) was awarded The American Book Award in 1995. He has also co-authored the textbook The Ojibway (2004), to which he contributed a number of essays on Native American culture. Currently, Henry serves as the director of the creative writing program at Michigan State University. He teaches courses in American literature, creative writing, and American Indian literature.
"Spirit Matters is haunted by people whose voices are so indelible they speak from a world beyond this one--a powerful country where stories are spells that inhabit the living. Gordon Henry has created a compelling, uncanny book."
—Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Night Watchman, a novel
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