#CWQJ Winter 2019

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Kolk’s Food For Folks

Some Winter Recipes to warm up your kitchens and you're tummies.

Delicious Warming Butternut Squash Soup

Preheat oven to 350.

One butternut squash pealed and chopped in 1 inch cubes

2 to 3 carrots peeled and chopped into 1 inch rounds

1 medium sweet potato peeled and chopped into 1/2 chunks

2-4 inch section of ginger peeled and chopped in half

2-4 cloves of garlic

2 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil

1 to 2 teaspoons each of turmeric, coriander, Cumin, sea salt

4-8 cups of vegetable or chicken broth

Cilantro or dill (optional)

Put squash, carrots, and sweet potato into one or two baking sheets so fit nicely.

Using a small piece of tin foil underneath garlic and ginger, sprinkle olive oil over garlic and ginger and then wrap in foil, put to side.  

Sprinkle remaining oil over vegetables and then sprinkle with seasonings.

Massage well with hands.

Put tinfoil ball into pan.

Place Into oven for 20 minutes.

Mix well and turn pan(s), put back into oven for 15 minutes or until everything is soft.

Place into blender and cover with broth (I usually use 4 oz of broth to half vegetables,  or use immersion blender in large pot.

Serve immediately sprinkled with herb of choice or let cool before refrigerating or freezing.

Soup freezes well.

Gluten Free Biscuits

Ingredients

1½ cups superfine white or brown rice flour plus more for rolling ¾ cup tapioca or potato starch  1 tablespoon baking powder 1 teaspoon fine sea salt 6 tablespoons cold fat (such as butter, Earth Balance or shortening), cut into small pieces ¾ cup milk (any kind including dairy free)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon baking mat.

Whisk together the flour, starch baking powder and salt. Cut the fat into the flour either with a pastry cutter, two knives or by rubbing the fat into the flour with your fingers. Make sure you leave some larger pieces of fat. Add the liquid, starting with ½ a cup and gradually adding a little more at a time, mixing until the dough comes together. Put a little flour on a work surface and dump out the dough. Knead 3 or 4 times then either roll or pat it out to about ½ inch thick. Cut into biscuits using a 2 ½ inch cookie cutter. You can gently reform the dough to cut more biscuits. Place the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm.

This recipe makes 12 gluten free biscuits depending on the size.

For more recipes, her visual art, and a peek into her world, go here: SARAH KOLKER

Sarah Kolker, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Moore College of Art and Design, was born and raised in Philadelphia and has studied health and wellness practices in Philadelphia, Jamaica, SF Bay Area and New York City. Sarah is an Artist, Educator, Chef, and Certified Yoga Instructor.

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Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal - Early Winter 2019

Welcome ~ Ximopanōltih

As we move into winter, which for our ancestors was traditionally a time of hibernation and going profoundly inward, it is very important for us to remember that this is good. I say this because as people living in the 21st century, unless we are asleep, we are programed always be in constant motion, always be busy working or doing something in order to feel successful and worse to not feel lazy. We’ve been taught that rest is a waste and loss of time. And while we as activists and people who care recognize that these are particularly perilous times, which do need our attention and our concerted efforts and action which always feels so urgent that we can’t risk allowing our efforts to wane or even let our guard down, we do need to make time to rest, relax and regroup. Rested we can make better plans to mount bigger, and more creative offensives to the severe attacks on mother earth and all her relatives — the living and breathing.

As we all know when we don’t rest and take care of ourselves, we can become seriously burned out, sick, or worse and this serves no one. So while we must continue to take our turn at being point persons in these constant battles against ignorance and backwardness during this time of rest under the blanket of winter, we must also find time to go inward and to decompress. Some simple ways to get a little more rest are to endeavor to cut our workday at the, or a, scheduled time every day, go to bed earlier, sleep in or nap on the weekends, change over our exercise routines to include more modalities like Yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, stretching, and strengthening, instead of the more aerobic and strenuous workouts we might be used to.

These wonderful winter offerings from Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal contributors include some beautiful and powerful art, meditations, poetry and fiction. Hope you enjoy them as you sit back and relax before a warming fire or in a toasty room lounging in a favorite comfy armchair.

From all of us here at Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal ~

Happy Holidays! ¡Felices Fiestas! Ma Xipactinemi, (Be Well) The Editor p.s. The deadline for submissions to the Spring issue of CWQJ is March 10, 2019. Thanks to Redearth Productions & Cultural Work for sponsoring our submissions process. Please go there ^^ and submit work. Our issues are loosely themed on the four seasons. We accept articles, interviews, essays, poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction, original artwork, herbal and natural remedy recipes, food recipes, and yes, political commentary on what’s happening in our world. 

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Two Poems by Cathy Arellano -Fugitive Slave Act and Immigration, a found poem based on “The Long Struggle for America’s Soul” by Andrew Delbanco* and Alfie, What’s It All About?

Art is copyright ©2017 Hedy Treviño. Mixed media, acrylic base, collage on gold foil. All rights reserved.

Fugitive Slave Act and Immigration, a found poem based on “The Long Struggle for America’s Soul” by Andrew Delbanco*

southern border separation children parents president’s denigration nonwhite migrants denying birthright citizenship pledge federal troops caravan frantic refugees

not first time president threatened   return them to horrors fled African-Americans not human property no different cattle sheep

South Carolina “Act to Prevent Runaways” 1683 hundred years later Georgia nightly slave patrol

Philadelphia 1787 problem new nation slaves running                                                                      freedom

Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 Constitution founding fathers stop them

“right to recover our slaves” stating easier than carrying out just as “Build the Wall!” easier than building

obliged to return runaways

obliged to return stray livestock stolen cash

but boundary slavery                                                                                freedom porous

slave owners cut off shoes collected at night runaways resisting killed with impunity only witness killer himself

most fugitives never far tendons cut faces branded   kept on trying

just as in our time immigrants keep coming 1840s fugitive slave problem gravest of all questions calls for secession congress tried to solve August 1850   Fugitive Slave Act

president signed law law without mercy denied most basic right habeas corpus right to challenge detention forbade        own defense trial by jury disallowed exonerating evidence criminalized sheltering fugitive required local authorities assist recovering lost human                                                           property

free Black people in North even never been enslaved lives infused with terror of being deported

in South deepened despair already desperate

1851 free Black people organize resistance

Norfolk, Va. slave catchers seized young man Shadrach with his waiter’s apron still on Black crowd gathered Court Square rushed courtroom hustled whisked from Boston to Cambridge to Canada

Lancaster County, Pa. slave owner tried force return shot killed by Black man

Syracuse biracial crowd attacked police station clubs axes battering ram Canada

Milwaukee Joshua Glover escaped held until twenty men large timber bumb bumb bumb down door out Glover

1850 more than three million Black people legally enslaved within country’s borders

politicians racist

chief justice United States Blacks have no rights White man bound to respect

Boston New Bedford Syracuse Cincinnati Rochester “sanctuary cities”

Black people feared law enforcement

congress courts collapsed

fugitive slaves 19th century undocumented immigrants today non-persons

Who  is       isn’t   human?

Declaration of Independence “all men created equal “unalienable rights” “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”

1854 Abraham Lincoln readopt the Declaration

postwar constitutional amendments guarantee citizenship right to vote

former slaves naturalized immigrants

The New Deal tried The Civil Rights Movement tried dismantle Jim Crow

age of trump rights constricted   rescinded

self-evident truth

all people life liberty pursuit of happiness long way from settled

Note: I have adjusted some capitalization, removed most punctuation, changed Delbanco’s “illegal” and replaced with “undocumented” before “immigrant(s)”. Words are in same order as article.

Alfie, What’s It All About?

every Saturday during our walk up and down the coolest street in town we stopped at the American Music Store (they changed their name to Música Latina when us Latinos finally reached a critical and commercial mass)

this was Mom’s spot she only bought one LP or a couple 45s each time but “each time” times “every Saturday” equals stacks and stacks of Stax fingers ready to snap on yellow background Motown road maps guiding the way with its red star

and the rest of our housemates Capitol, Atlantic, RCA, Buddha Tamla, Scepter, Capitol, Philips crashing in the Livingroom behind to the left of right of in front of her stereo

one Saturday when we were 6 and 7 years old Mom made a payment on our inheritance her magic her balm her joy

You girls, pick a record my older sister and I knew this was a moment like when someone else’s Mom teaches them to bake cookies Mom was offering us something precious

it was sweet not like later when Mom let my sister smoke in front of her when she was 15

it wasn’t mine or my sister’s birthday I hadn’t ever dreamed this moment would arrive but I was ready we both were

My sister turned around ran to the back of the store dug in a white bin flipped through grabbed her catch clutched it in her arms ran back to us at the counter showed us her treasure

The Three Little Pigs

I couldn’t read very well but I recognized the pigs and wolf on the cover behind the counter Enrique turned to me for my order I didn’t run just said

Alfie

he looked at Mom then back at me by Dionne Warwick?

huh?

Yes, that one Mom told him

we returned the next Saturday and the next and the next Mom bought us many more 45s not as many as she bought herself but enough to begin our own stacks

my sister started buying classic Oldies “Angel Baby” and “Sitting in the Park” I bought Prince’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover” Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” for the until then unheard of price of $4.99 and later AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”

when she died in 1984 after a month in the hospital when we were 18 and 19 Mom had amassed so many records and we had to move so fast and were so lost in the chaos we threw them away

I wish I had all her records back I’d play them for my partner our son

no, I’d trade hers, mine, my sister’s, all the 45s, LPs, and CDs in the world for one more moment with her

The broken-hearted lesbian love poems in Cathy Arellano’s I LOVE MY WOMEN, SOMETIMES THEY LOVE ME are suitable for anyone who has loved, been loved, or been left. I LOVE MY WOMEN was released in Fall 2017 from Kórima Press. In 2016, Kórima published SALVATION ON MISSION STREET, Arellano’s family memoir in poems and stories set in San Francisco from the 1960s to the 2000s. SALVATION won the 2017 Golden Crown Literary Society’s Debut Author Award.

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Art, Meditation, and Poetry By Martivón Galindo

MEDITATIONS:

“Listening”

Listening to my breath is a peaceful moment of communion with trees, water, and every vibration outside while I slowly turn within rhythmically producing and interchanging life. Listening is a delicate, precise, and relaxing art. It stops the mind’s insistence in being the star of the night or the focus of attention, and just be quiet. I wonder, if I could only attentively listen to the beats of the universe, I might magically capture its claim, its cry, and its desperate need for me -one infinitesimal particle of a grain of sand – to do my humble part.

Monotipo

Andando lejos

Compartimos del ayer los volcanes Los terremotos el silencio forzado la presencia del Mozote un Romero ascendiendo y otro destructor

Compartimos un mismo cielo las pupusas humeantes de loroco y de queso La reventazón del Pacífico Los vientos de octubre las posadas y el frío del terror

Compartimos un Roque que sigue renaciendo pero también las sombras de la muerte las lágrimas los amigos desaparecidos el seis de agosto el maquilishuat y el árbol de fuego

Compartimos hoy andando lejos la nostalgia y la tristeza de todo eso el "English only" nuestros recuerdos vivos los corazones comunicantes de la esperanza Y nuestro amor

Martivón Galindo, PhD is a Professor of Latin American and Latino/a Studies and Director of Study Abroad at Holy Names University. Her books include: Retazos  (Poesía y Prosa), Para Amaestrar un Tigre (cuentos),  Imponiendo Presencias ( Editora con A. Molina), Whisper of dead Leaves (poetry in English), Soñando una Nación y Creando una Identidad (tesis doctoral), Isla de Oro (editora), Museo de Arte para El Salvador (Tesis de Arquitectura), Antología de Cuentos Latinos, as well as other essays, poems and short stories published in newspapers and literary publications in the United States and El Salvador. 

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Dark Mother and Ode to Death - Two Poems By Lisha Adela García

Dark Mother

The living and the dead ask you Dark Mother of uncreated light,      

what kind of cuchilloyou use to cut a soul for rebirth?  

The volcanoes of México provide the obsidian blade

that slices a new life into understanding?

Cucuy birds invade the air with instructions

on how to enter your pitcher of stars.

Black Madonna, I am here to assist.

I hear ice-voice skeletons shush shush in their gray world

and dance occasionally with an orange butterfly.

They reach out to you Mother, with a silver rope.

From our circle, we drum heartbeats

on goatskins to aid your summons.

Invisible beings ask for color.

I tell them they are ghosts

that require the return of your embrace

so the earth can learn their bones,

stories resting in dark rich clay.  

Ode To Death

After Denise Levertov

I must be your lover for you visit often.

Just when the flesh craves the freedom

of weightless remembrance,

the knee grinds into its cartilage;

and headaches return to stand guard.

We don’t even have the sense of geese

to fly counter to a storm.

Instead, continue to believe

the breeze conjured prayer

of the redwoods of Muir

we are not just erased chalk

we are not just erased chalk—

This lacquered loneliness

of growing older

is like the frugality of kindness

in a large city.

Encased in concrete

the wind is a wolf’s tongue

caressing its teeth

savoring the fog that walks

inside the truant people.

Death should not be a craving,

it is the promise of the red maple leaf pretending

to be preserved in ice

after a storm, until it melts.  

Lisha Adela García is a poet who has México, the United States and the land in between in her work. She has an MFA from Vermont College in Writing and currently resides in Texas with her beloved four-legged children. Lisha has a chapbook entitled, This Stone Will Speak, from Pudding House Press. Her book, Blood Rivers, from Blue Light Press of San Francisco was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Her most recent book is A Rope of Luna by Blue Light Press that was launched in 2018. She also has a Master’s in International Business from Thunderbird for the left side of her brain.

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El Regalo Por Zheyla Henricksen

El Regalo

Y el inverno llegó

Y el le record

Que era la mujer

Deseada por él

En muchas lunas

And Winter arrived

And he reminded her

That she was the woman

Desired by him

For many a moon

Zheyla  Henriksen, Ecuatoriana. Reside en los EE. UU. Profesora jubilada. Obtuvo su doctorado, en UC Davis. En 1967 obtiene en Ecuador el tercer lugar con el poema Fantasías en Los Primeros Juegos Florales Estudiantiles. Participa en el primer encuentro de poetisas ecuatorianas. Le entregan la Medalla al Mérito Cultural en Cuenca, Ecuador. Interviene en recitales poéticos y ponencias en Ecuador, Estado Unidos, Panamá, Canadá, Argentina, Cuba y España. Tiene tres libros publicados: Poemas dispersos, Caleidoscopio del recuerdo y Pedazos, los recuerdos y la tesis doctoral Tiempo sagrado y tiempo profano en Borges y Cortázar. La mayoría de sus ponencias han sido publicadas. Queda como una de los cinco o seis finalistas en el Concurso Internacional de Poesía Erótica en Gijón, España en 2004 y 2014.  Participa con frecuencia en la Exhibición Internacional de Poemas Poster de Poetas Iberoamericanos Contemporáneos. Es miembro de Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol en Sacramento, E.E.U.U. y en el Circulo de Escritores. Dirige y baila en el Ballet Folclórico Ecuatoriano INTI-TULPA y participa en Jodette Belly Dance Academy presentándose en festivales culturales.

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The Keeper of Lost Time and Impermanence - Two Poems by Irene Lipshin

THE KEEPER OF LOST TIME

A century   dead certificates

marriage  birth divorce  exodus

the battery ran out decades ago

but the pendulum on grandmother’s clock

a constant   moves in endless hypnotic rhythm

on a high shelf I cannot reach

And more . . .

pictures of ancestors from Lithuania

who never stepped on American soil

shuffled in a pile of snapshots of lost husbands

and wayward children

time sitting in desk chairs

staring at the scrawl on chalkboards

watching a professor’s

mustache march up and down

and the spit shooting across the room

as he explains a debatable fact

at home in front of screens

a phone connected to calendars

politics  crime timepieces  alarms

Facebook wants

my mother’s death certificate

to prove she departed

I refuse to answer their request  

so  friends leave comments

what are you up to these days

why don’t you write? they ask

IMPERMANENCE  

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck~Dalai Lama

Six days creating a mandala, a sand

painting colored with healing prayers.

On the seventh morning, a dissolution

ceremony. The Monks destroy

their creation, brush the grains

to the center, pour them into a brass urn

no bigger than a hand. In the blessing,

they ask the deities to heal the earth.

Afternoon at the river, the Geshe

scatters wisdom of non-attachment,

north, south, east, west, releasing

sacred sand to the flowing water.

Witnesses observe, wishing

to reverse so many words

and deeds, as easily as sweeping

them away with a feather and casting

them to the currents.

Irene Lipshin writes with Red Fox Underground Poets in the California Sierra Nevada Foothills.  She weaves universal human experiences, family stories, socio-political and environmental issues into her narrative poetry.  Her work has been published in print and online journals and anthologies, including La Bloga, Poets Responding; Poets Against the War; We Beg to Differ, An Anthology for Peace; Because People Matter: Women Poets Speak Out Against the War; Broken Circles, A gathering of poems for hunger; a broadside, Territorio Nuevoand a chapbook, Shadowlines.

A former teacher of English Language Learners, Irene integrated poetry written in English and Spanish by Poet Francisco X. Alarcon and others into the bilingual lessons.  She now coaches students for the National Poetry Out Loud program and has organized poetry readings for Season for Nonviolence.

In 2017, Irene read poetry in Havana, Cuba, as a member of the Delegation of American Poets, led by Odilia Galván Rodriguez, for the Festival Internacional de Poesia de la Habana.

Irene’s current passion, in addition to poetry, is long distance walking the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage in Spain and Portugal. To read about her adventures, read her wordpress blog, Walking through the Ages, Life’s Journeys and Caminos.www.walkingthroughtheages.com

https://walkingthroughtheages.com/2018/06/03/wandering-and-walking-on-the-camino/A good place to start is June 3, 2018, Wandering and Walking on the Camino.

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Grinding Rock By Janet Rodriguez

I squat and release my bladder, breathing in the river’s green and looking up to the stars, just hours before we make our sacred journey to the grinding rock.  The early morning sky is dark purple where it touches the earth, but the moon is round and high in the sky, painting  foamy clouds yellow, pink and orange as they move near her. The longer I look, the more the sky changes, drawing twinkling stars toward each other, forming a new constellation—my mother, standing there in the sky.  I have never seen the stars move like this, so I am frightened. My mother has been dead for more than twenty winters, but now her form is clear in the stars, looking down at me.  Her face is bright, her unbraided hair flows over her shoulders, and her hands are glowing so brightly that I know she is here from the spirit life, where there is no need to grind acorns, or plant roots.  She wears her celebration dress and head covering, tightly woven with the friendship design. When she speaks, her voice sounds like the whispers of wind:

Me’yula, my daughter, do not fear.  Great change is coming for our people. On your journey to the grinding rock, take an extra basket strap with you in your baby’s cradle and be ready to trade it.  White men will overtake you, but death will be quick.  I will help you across the great river, into this world without boundaries.  You have no need to worry—the harvest of acorns will last through the winter, but soon we will be outnumbered in our own land.  The united chiefs will strike bargains with dishonest men.  Soon, your husband will step across the bridge to the spirit life.  Your daughter will be content among the living, even though she will join a people who are not her own.  Trust me, my daughter.  

She disappears as quickly as she came, and I am left there, still squatting and staring into the sky.

I stand up and look around.  The river and moon are still bright; the stars are back in their places.  I walk back to our house, wondering what just happened. A thousand questions dance in my head: Why had my mother not mentioned my son, Aku-aku?  What about my twelve-year-old daughter, Piwan? Will I be able to avoid death if I do not journey to the grinding rock?

I reach our house and walk in the doorway. My husband, Toh’l, is asleep on his mat, snoring loudly.  Our son, wrapped tightly, lightly snores next to him.  Piwan, is already awake, sitting up and braiding her hair.

“Why is your face troubled?” she whispers.

“I went outside to pee,” I answer, picking up Aku-Aku.  He wakes up as I unwrap the blanket that covers him. I begin to dress him in his day clothes, feeling Piwan’s eyes still on me.  I sing as I bring the baby’s mouth to my breast.

“Did you see something outside?” Piwan asks.

“Get the basket ready,” I say.  “We will leave as soon as Aku-aku finishes.”

***

The women of the three tribes gather once a year at the grinding rock, usually four days after the first harvest moon.  Two days ago, it appeared in the evening sky, like a pale gold sun, floating just above the horizon. Its light cast an orange glow over the entire village, and my cousin, Y’amu and I made plans for the journey.  I explained to Piwan that she would be able to join us for the first time, carrying our family’s acorn basket. I had never seen my daughter so happy.  She is usually a very serious girl, but that night, as we ate bits of dry deer meat together, she could not stop smiling. She will soon see how heavy the basket is.

Ek’imut, the only other woman still alive in our village, will stay home.  In the past year she has become unsteady on her feet, gnarled as tree roots. When I told her that it would not be wise for her to join us, her milky grey eyes were watery.

“I understand,” she said, but I could tell my words wounded her.  

In the last few years, we have lost many people.  Our tribe is no longer strong, even though we have survived disease, harsh droughts, and the violence of uninvited white men who want our land. We now live a life of grief, familiar with pain. This journey to the grinding rock is important for our community now.  It may be our final one.

Yokut traditions involve ceremony and celebration—these we must keep alive for our souls to recover.  The grinding rock is a sacred place, a wavy outcropping of limestone with more than a thousand mortar holes. Women travel from all directions, carry cone-shaped baskets filled with acorns, teach their daughters how to kneel on the grinding rock, grind the acorns with pestle stones in ancient mortar holes. We sing the songs of our ancestors, keeping the rhythm of shared tradition.  

My own mother never took me to the grinding rock. By that time, she had crossed over the bridge to the spirit world, and Ba’amu was functioning as my Yokut mother, the one who taught me how to live as a Yokut woman.

My mother died as she struggled to bring my baby brother into this world.  She was already weak from the virus that killed our people that winter.  I was younger than Piwan is now, but the women allowed me to stay for the birth, even when it got hard. Mama squatted over a hole in the middle of the dirt floor, one sister on each side of her, holding her elbows as she pushed.  Mama kept falling backward, moaning and weeping, asking if she could lie down. The women sang, dried her tears, and encouraged her as long as they could, but when her body collapsed and her eyes rolled back, the elder women jumped up.

“Lay her down!” they shouted. “Ca’ama, reach in and pull the baby out!”

I watched, silently, as two sisters removed a grey, lifeless baby from Mama and placed it on the basket tray.  I looked at Mama’s face. Her eyes were open, but nothing was in them. I looked around, wondering what I should do.  Ba’amu was suddenly at my side, taking my hand.

“Your mother and brother left this life,” she said. “They have flown away to a better place.”

“I want to go with them,” I cried.  

Ba’amu shook her head.  “Not today.”

As the women sang the death song, Ba’amu took me by the hand to the river, where she said my father was waiting for us.  As we walked, Ba’amu sang the death song slowly.

“Try to sing with me,” she said.  She was an elder, so I obeyed her, singing the strange words.  I felt something like the flapping of feathers inside of me, a caged bird, trying to escape.  We sang softly, but when we came close to the river, Ba’amu stopped.

“Wait here,” she said.  “I must tell your father by myself.”  She walked on, but I followed her quietly, until I could see the place where my father and my Uncle K’Anu were standing by the river, talking.  At first, they did not see Ba’amu approaching, but soon my father stood up straight and stepped toward her, ready to hear he had a son.  

I saw Ba’amu lift her right palm in front of her, a sign of refusal.  

“Your wife took your son to the next world,” she said. “They will be able to live there forever, without conflict.”

My father’s face did not change at first, but then he pulled off his buckskin pants, threw them to the side, and sank to his knees.  He lifted handfuls of dirt to his face and smeared it all over himself.  He hit the ground in front of him and began to cry tears. My Uncle K’Anu pulled him to his feet.

“Be strong, my brother,” he said.  He put his arm around him and they walked a few paces. I watched my father’s face, frightened of this emotion that I had never seen in him.  As I watched, my tears did not come.

In the next few months, my father and I lived like shadows.  People brought us food and we ate it.  When night came, we slept.  We did not sing or laugh.  My father did not pretend to chase me, like a bear, nor did he hunt with Uncle K’Anu.  We both missed her—the heart of our family.  I missed my mother’s brightness, and I missed the baby brother I never knew.

The Mourning Ceremony happened in the summer, after the twelfth moon.  Our tribe gathered near the river, and our chief, the great Leucha, led neighboring chiefs and their people as we all mourned for the ones we lost that year.

The first day of the ceremony, we sang and began the weeping.  For the first time since Mama died, my father and I cried together, wailing for the two of them.  We did this for two days, our tears so plentiful that they made a ring of water around us.  I hardly noticed the other mourners, crying in the circle with us.

On the third day, we made straw figures of the people we lost, taking up green and dried tules and string to tie them together.  I made a small figure of Mama. With the bark of the strip tree, I created a dancing dress for her, just like the one she wore to celebrations.  When I was finished, I made a smaller figure: a baby in a tiny cradle.  I tied the cradle to Mama’s back, weeping as I did.  I tied both figures to my chest with string, but Ba’amu came close to me and cut the string with her knife.  

“Never attach yourself to the dead,” she whispered to me. “Let them go.”

I wept. At night, I fell asleep in her lap.

The next day, I woke to the sounds of the big drum. When I woke, I could see the medicine men singing and dancing in their bright costumes and headdresses, moving in a circle around a large fire.  I took my place in the circle, sitting between Ba’amu and my father.  People began to dance in a circle, lifting their grieving dolls to the sky and then throwing them into the flames. Ba’amu showed me how to wave the smoke into my faces, breathing in the burning grief of others so we could share the burden of grief.

When my father got up to dance, two of our elders joined him.  The drum beat steadily and the song continued.  My father held his dolls, one as large as the other, and shouted as he cast them into the flames.  Ba’amu rose and danced, and without thinking, I joined her, feeling the drum take control of my arms and legs.  We danced, following the rhythms of the song.  My dolls reached for the fire and I released them to it.  The fire burned away these objects that held my grief and disappointment.

That night, everyone ate from baskets of fish, foul, acorn bread, berries, onions and squash.  I ate so much food that I felt sick.  I went to shit several times before I went to sleep in my house, but I was alive again.  

After the Mourning Ceremony, my father and I began to speak to each other again.

“Daughter,” he said one evening, not using my name—Me’yula—because it sounds like the name of my mother, Ma’aila, and it is dangerous to speak the name of someone who has died.  “Ba’amu will be your Yokut mother now.  She will show you the ways to be a woman.”

The ducks on the river called out, squawking and celebrating each member of the family, but I remained silent.  I did not want to hear my father’s words; I did not want a new mother.  I could feel my father watching me closely, so I answered.

“Yes, Father.”

The following day, I walked the path to Ba’amu’s house.  She was not there.  I looked around, and saw her praying by the great river, stretching out her arms and lifting her face to the wind. I walked down to Ba’amu, and lifted my own face to the sky, hoping that I would feel connection to the spirits, but I did not. When I looked back at Ba’amu, she was facing me.

“Your own mother has crossed the bridge into the spirit world,” she said.  “Now you have a life to live. Do you want to learn the ways of your people?”

I looked down at my feet and then back at her. “Yes.”

She nodded. “I will teach you the ways, but I know I will never take her place.”

And from that day forward, I was happy to call Ba’amu my Yokut Mother.

***

To remove the bitter taste from the acorn meal, you must treat it with hot water like this.  This cooking basket is different from your water basket, where you cannot put water or the fire stones. Do you see how the long wooden tongs are used to drop fire stones in the water?  I keep these tongs for the family. See how I lay the acorn meal on the sand and pat it down like this?  The sand will not get into the meal, even when we pour the hot water over the mush. They are all working together. Are you watching? Good. Pour the hot water over the meal like this.  Not to the side, but over it. See how the water is draining? Now, I will put these rocks back in the fire with the tongs.  See how I lift them? Now I push them into the fire.  Now we wait for them to get hot again. We will repeat this process four times, each time the water will filter through the acorn meal.  Once it is finished, we take out the meal and let it dry out in the sun again. This is how we make the acorn ready to cook.  

***

Aku-Aku smiles at me as I strap him in his cradle. Piwan picks up her new buckskin strap that my husband, Toh’l, has made for her, seasoning it with water and salmon oil.  She is excited to use it, and when she takes it outside, I can hear her attach the acorn basket to its ends and then pull it up with her forehead.  I take my own basket strap from beneath the blankets in the corner and tuck it beneath Aku-aku’s feet, safe in the cradle just as my mother told me. I lift the cradle and join Piwan outside.

Y’amuis already in the clearing, waiting for us, and Piwan helps me lift the cradle strap over my head, and adjusts it on my shoulders.

“Who will go to the rock with us?” she asks me.

“All of the women who have walked this road before us,” I answer.  “They are always with us.” When I face her, I see her eyes are filled with a hope so bright, it makes me weep.  

We join Y’amu in the clearing and begin our walk.

***

We start to sing the grinding song, encouraging our feet as we climb the slow grade to the grinding rock.  Y’amu and Piwan sing, not paying too much attention to the rising sun, climbing over the hill.  We are nearly at the top of our hill, a place where we can stop and rest and look down at our village, when I decide to tell them.

“Wait,” I say, stopping where I am.  They turn and face me, stopping their song and looking at me.

“What is it?” Y’amu asks.  She looks at the hem of my dress, expecting to see a tangle of thorns near my feet, or something else that stops me. Instead she only sees me, shaking my head.  

“The spirit of my mother came to me this morning,” I say.  

Piwan looks at me, and I can tell she is frightened. Y’amuis no longer looking at me, but over my shoulder. She lowers her acorn basket, and points at the river.

“Look!”

I turn around and see our village, silent in the mist.  The rising sun shimmers on the river’s surface, and the boats look like floating animal skins, even though they are actually sturdy tree trunks, held together by ropes.

“They must have tied them to our tree,” she says, kneeling down.  Piwan and I kneel beside Y’amu, and we all watch the river.

As I focus, I see a few men, dressed in mining clothes, smoking small pipes together.  They have guns on their backs.  I swallow.

“Mama,” Piwan whispers, “Shall we go warn the men?”

“The men know,” I say, confident that Toh’l is crouching in the tall grass, hidden from our view, ready to strike the boatmen, if necessary.

“We must go back,” Y’amu says.  

“No,” I say. “There is danger there and it is good we are here.”

Y’amu looks at me harshly.  

“You stay here,” I say, carefully unstrapping the cradle from my head.  I rest it on the ground next to me. Aku-aku is sleeping, and I hand his cradle to Piwan. “I am the fastest runner,” I say, “I can run to the grinding rock and get help.”

A jackrabbit darts past us, and we all turn to see why.  Three white men, wearing hats, long pants, and shirts are walking toward us, each of them moving carefully, but without fear.  I feel my bladder release as I watch them.  They carry short guns, not rifles. They look like the miners who travel the river, looking for gold. They look like they are smiling, but their eyes are hard.  One of them says something to us, looking down at us in our kneeling position.  I try to remember Mama’s words.  She told me to not fear them.

The white man who speaks has yellow hair.  He holds out his hand and points to the flat part of it.  

I stand up, and Piwan cries.  Y’amu grabs her arm.

The yellow haired man says something else. He points to his hand again.

I turn to see Y’amu and Piwan cowering in the grass, shielding Aku-aku with their trembling bodies.  

“Do not be afraid,” I say to them.  “Even if I die, you must not fear.”

I kneel over Aku-aku’s cradle and reach underneath him for the extra basket strap, which comes out easily. He does not stir when I put my forehead on his small body and whisper that I love him.  I touch Piwan, who is crying.

“Stay here,” I tell her.

I stand up and walk toward the men.  The yellow haired one steps back; the other two watch me closely, their small guns still in their hands.  They all smell of filth; they have not bathed.  I hold out the strap with both hands, offering it to the yellow-haired one, my eyes downcast.  He steps toward me, holding the short gun with one hand and taking the strap from my hands with the other.  He tries to examine it, but he cannot do it while he is holding the gun.  He lowers himself to the grass, never taking his eyes off me, and sits on his haunches; I do the same.  We are now only an arm’s length from one another.  He lays his gun down in the grass next to him and unfolds the strap. The other two men come near him and lean over to admire the tight weave, our pattern of health and friendship.

None of them notice when I pull yellow-hair’s gun toward me.  I want to throw it in the tall grasses, or take it home for my husband.  Heavy as a pestle stone in my two hands, I am unprepared to feel the thunder as it explodes. Two of the men jump and turn to me, startled.  The yellow-haired man falls forward, on his face.  He drops my strap in the grass, spotted with blood now.  One of the men bounds down the hill like the jackrabbit.  Piwan and Y’amu are screaming, covering the cradle with their bodies.  The last man is facing me, shouting.  He is trying to hold his gun, but he is trembling and his hands are not working properly.  I can see that he is only a boy, desperate and frightened.  I try to offer the gun to him, but something hits my chest with the speed of a hawk crashing into me.  I fall to the ground, without breath.  

Mama is suddenly next to me, taking my hand and pulling me toward the river.  There is no ground beneath our feet, only the sky. I look down and see Y’amu and Piwan over my empty body, weeping as they claw at their faces.  I see the body of the yellow-haired man, lifeless over the blue grass—my strap next to him, speckled with blood.  The man who shot me is beside him, on his knees, shaking the body of his friend.  The one who bounded down the hill is approaching Toh’l, crouching and waiting for him in the tall grass.

My mother and I are flying away, and I suddenly I feel her hand in mine.  I can feel her heart pumping with joy, and she can feel mine.  We sing a new song, one without words that celebrates the sweet faithfulness of the bridge that stretches between the limitless spirit world and the fading green river of the living.

Janet Rodriguez is an author and editor living in Sacramento with her husband, extended family, two dogs and one cat. In the United States, her work has appeared in Salon.com, American River Review, Calaveras Station, and The Sacramento Family Guide. Rodriguez has also co-authored two memoirs that have been published in South Africa. Her short stories, essays, and poetry usually deal with themes involving the mixed-race identity and experiences taking place in a culturally binary world. Currently she is an MFA candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where she serves as an editor for the magazine, Lunch Ticket.

[cloudwomensquarterly]

Patron Saint and Crossroads -Two Poems by Peggy Morrison

Patron Saint

The whole world hurt my mother

the world that saw her fat and

her hair fly-away.

That saw a foreigner and a peasant woman.

saw she did not belong

saw she was soft and

hurt her because of that

squeezed her with rough pliers,

threw her away

pushed her aside

loved her softness for a moment and

then found it dull.

All the world who did not see her sharp mind

her relentless courage

her power

as she spent herself

to hold body and soul together.

protect us, protect her children

pay the rent and the light bill

bathe in cold water when there

was no hot

penny pinch, and be looked down upon

by the arrogant.

sacrifice

have no way out

the whole machinery hurt my mother

the machinery that made it her fault

the low pay for the smart work she

did. Her precise calculations and

analysis, her workbought

the low rent house, desperate

tears, desperate decisions,

fear,

prayers to saint jude,

the saint of hopeless causes.

to be a woman

in a machinery of want

Crossroads

Together

we feathered through the spackled light

25 miles on a soft dirt road, through trees, silence

arriving, the pristine valley with its weathered

cabins. In the bright morning we heard a story or two,

saw where bears

shattered some car windows.

We shouldered our packs, gear,

and began to climb

Spring snow up over Sawtooth Pass, and clear up the ridge curve

of the peak

invigorated by the cold air, wearing gaitors, crawled

the surreal granite canines

Into dark Lost Canyon, like a wine-dark sea, along rushing deep

stream, across bowl-lands, glacial till strewn with white

granite boulders, seeing far along the Kaweah ridge,

alpenglow.

Past jewel lakes and up, up the graceful rise from dawn, the

massive symmetrical flank of The Kaweah, white smooth, our

crampons like little pin pricks, like the tiny patterns of

sandpiper footprints on a tide-washed beach.

always the edge of intense blue against the white diagonal

At last

we arrive at the summit of Mount Kaweah, before us across blue-green

chasm, the eastern ridge- Tyndall, Whitney, Williamson, Russell.

and the Great Western Divide arcs above the Kern River, the plateaus, the

Kaweahs themselves, Ionian Basin dark in view;

an awesome beauty,  

range after range, snow after snow after forest, lake

cloud, breath,

sitting crosslegged

on the oval of dark gray

granite, I looked down,

at your hand in mine, blunt and used for work,

your dry, brown skin, edges red with cold, black dirt in the

cracks, exuding its small, constant warmth,

your hand merged through the

edges of sky, rock and light,

moved me so deep; breathe deep.

No matter what happened next,

I loved you then.

Peggy Morrison is a born-and-raised Californian who grew up in Long Beach and Sacramento, went to college in Berkeley, Davis and Monterey, and raised her daughter in Watsonville while working as a bilingual teacher until moving to San Francisco in 2011. Along with writing, she loves music, dance & backpacking. In July of 2017, Peggy was honored to be part of a U.S. delegation to CubaPoesia, International Poetry Festival in Havana.

[cloudwomensquarterly]

spirit tree of life | sleep and dream awhile | to vision another day

[cloudwomensquarterly]

Cloud Women’s Quarterly Journal ~ Spring 2019

Welcome ~ Ximopanōltih!

     Yes, Spring is definitely here and somehow many of us still feel the urge to continue to hunker down in our nests and protect ourselves from the forever chill of winter climes we experience by the constant bombardment of the so-called president of these United States’ outlandish behavior .        Sadly, the stench of his hate permeates the country as his followers become ever bolder. Believing that they can berate others, with their constant English only and go back to your country diatribes, with impunity.  We’re all so sick of it. And many of us would rather not deal with it at all.      45′s behavior is much worse than that of his followers, because he fuels racism and xenophobia from the highest level of our government.  He gives impetus to people like Allison Johnson, 45, who was recently arrested in Norman, Oklahoma for vandalizing the Chickasaw Nation’s regional office in Oklahoma City and two Democratic party buildings in Oklahoma City and Norman, Oklahoma. Chickasaw Nation staff arrived to work to find that their offices had been vandalized.  The words “Indians will be gassed” and “lamp-shaded” were spray painted on the property.  “Savages HH” plus anti semitic statements which included Nazi symbols, and other graffiti supporting Trump’s re-election were also found. Johnson has turned herself in. But we shake our heads and ask, in what kind of mind does such a fanatical level of hatred fit. And in 2019 no less. What is to be done to heal this nation?      We here at Cloud Women's Dream Society and the quarterly journal that we publish, hope that in our efforts to include the rich creative work and diverse voices of our nation’s women that we will be able to plant more seeds of solidarity, hope, and beauty. We need them.      This is National Poetry Writing Month and we are proud to feature  poems from many talented writers – we love poetry! We also offer some wonderful fiction, creative non-fiction, photography, and some great recipes. Please enjoy!

Ma Xipactinemi, (Be Well)

The Editor

p.s. The deadline for submissions to the Summer Solstice issue of CWQJ is June 10th. Thanks to Redearth Productions & Cultural Work for sponsoring our submissions process. Please go there to submit work. Our issues are loosely themed on the four seasons. We accept articles, interviews, essays, poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction, original artwork, herbal and natural remedy recipes, food recipes, and yes, political commentary on what’s happening in our world.