Aimee Inglis

as a warning, and an offering:

a poison: medicine in small amounts.

Green mounds of feathered leaves

coil to cover ground, you are:

we-tsa oind-se eh-ko [𐓷𐓟𐓲𐓘 𐓫𐓰𐓮𐓟 𐓟𐓤𐓪]

snake and rattle together, like this:

Both the appetite and the alarm

My cousin breaks her toenail dancing–

red escapes like a river mouth into ocean.

I ask permission from you

to stop the bleeding–

Both the defense and the offense.

A year later you regenerate

seed yourself further south

As if to say, you can refuse to remain

where you’ve been planted.

Sometimes anthropologists have trouble

locating Osages in the historical record–

How many times we moved to a new country.

Always peace and war together, like this [𐓟𐓤𐓪]–

I learned it as a diversity of tactics.

Winter always holds in the cold and wet—

Water pools where old roots were pulled—

Running through drains fast dripping under floors.

Children get stuck running tractor donuts—

Man sleeps sticky with worry—

Artifact cans of a true Osage Man

settles in fingertips and swells.

First memory, an alchemy, a mix.

If he is a water boy and if I am dirt,

together we can make…

Water alone can’t make the sound

of a catfish, but a catfish has no sound

without water.

Water that holds nitrous runoff—

Water injected with salty brine—

Water running through lead pipes—

Water that shines with oil.

He says, “Oil drilling is really water mining.”

This is a dusty place.

MAH-sho-dse dust carried by

the wind finds its home

and nothing hides from dust—

until rainfall and days where earth

never dries, the paths are muddy—

and so we get fat from sitting,

surrounded by crabgrass instead

of tallgrass—we become crabs in a bucket,

crawling over the other crabs

to get out of the mud.