Streaming Read online

  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: [email protected].

  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