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Annotating the First Page of the First Navajo-English Dictionary

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My mother was a full-blooded Navajo woman, raised on the reservation, but she was never taught to speak her mother’s language. There was a time when most words were better left unspoken.

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​you should've done this a long time ago. you always let the hair grow so long, didn't i teach you anything? shhh, basta. there are worst things to cry about after all depression is an american thing/americans need a name for everything & I changed/mine before they could butcher it/your eyebrows they look like trees, meleesa/your mustache, you look like your father/ay/ay/ay/ay/

let me tell you about sadness

the time your abuelita put a belt over the door & she said your father isn't here but that is let me tell you about e-starving. about no college no high e-school. Melissa. you're so selfish for your sadness. you don't know pain. don't talk to me about pain. he doesn't leave here anymore. live. i didn't raise you to live like this. let me tell you about seeing your grandfather drinking everything away. he could've been something too, he built streets in Guatemala, just ask your Abuelita, ask her about the streets, the one he died on, the last time I saw him he was asking for money in front of my school. My aunts said you look just like a boy. my brothers said josefa you'll never come back. no one here could say my name & now no one calls me. & i fell asleep on the couch last night. it is like you don't even care. sadness is all/in your head & your hair is on top of it/sadness is what happens when you forget the hanging/belt over the door/sometimes children with empty stomachs is/nothing like coming home & feeling/like a fridge with nothing inside of it & remember what is inside of you: everything i fought for

remember your body/the body - a land of feelings we've been told to cut down/we rip the things we hate/about ourselves out & hope/they grow back weaker/but hair is the only thing that grows/The way things grow in the homeland/which is why we get goosebumps

when we hear spanish at the supermarket or when a dead friend's sweater hugs us in a dream

or when a kiss is planted on the back of the neck.
​
the hair follicles click back to life.

the buds shake themselves awake.

they rise from the grave we insist on digging.
​
the hairs stand up.
a million ancestors rooting
for the home team

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​you should've done this a long time ago. you always let the hair grow so long, didn't i teach you anything? shhh, basta.

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Thank you, instant mashed potatoes, your bland taste

makes me feel like an average American. Thank you,

incarcerated Americans, for filling the labor shortage

and packing potatoes in Idaho. Thank you, canned

cranberry sauce, for your gelatinous curves. Thank you,

Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin, your lake is now polluted

with phosphate-laden discharge from nearby cranberry

bogs. Thank you, crisp green beans, you are my excuse

for eating apple pie à la mode later. Thank you, indigenous

migrant workers, for picking the beans in Mexico's farm belt,

may your children survive the season. Thank you, NAFTA,

for making life dirt cheap. Thank you, Butterball Turkey,

for the word, butterball, which I repeat all day butterball,

butterball, butterball because it helps me swallow the bones

of genocide. Thank you, dark meat, for being so juicy

(no offense, dry and fragile white meat, you matter too).

Thank you, 90 million factory-farmed turkeys, for giving

your lives during the holidays. Thank you, factory-farm

workers, for clipping turkey toes and beaks so they don't scratch

and peck each other in overcrowded, dark sheds. Thank you,

genetic engineering and antibiotics, for accelerating

their growth. Thank you, stunning tank, for immobilizing

most of the turkeys hanging upside down by crippled legs.

Thank you, stainless steel knives, for your sharpened

edge and thirst for throat. Thank you, de-feathering

tank, for your scalding-hot water, for finally killing the last

still-conscious turkeys. Thank you, turkey tails, for feeding

Pacific Islanders all year round. Thank you, empire of

slaughter, for never wasting your fatty leftovers. Thank you,

tryptophan, for the promise of an afternoon nap;

I really need it. Thank you, store-bought stuffing,

for your ambiguously ethnic flavor, you remind me

that I'm not an average American. Thank you, gravy,

for being hot-off-the-boat and the most beautiful

brown. Thank you, dear readers, for joining me at the table

of this poem. Please join hands, bow your heads, and repeat

after me: "Let us bless the hands that harvest and butcher

our food, bless the hands that drive delivery trucks

and stock grocery shelves, bless the hands that cooked

and paid for this meal, bless the hands that bind

our hands and force-feed our endless mouth.

May we forgive each other and be forgiven."

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Thank you, instant mashed potatoes, your bland taste makes me feel like an average American. Thank you, incarcerated Americans, for filling the labor shortage and packing potatoes in Idaho. Thank you, canned cranberry sauce, for your gelatinous curves. Thank you, Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin, your lake is now polluted with phosphate-laden discharge from nearby cranberry bogs.

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"Language itself becomes an analogy—what something is like rather than what something is."

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"Language itself becomes an analogy—what something is like rather than what something is."

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Gentle now, doves of the thornberry and moringa thicket, don't add to my heart-ache your sighs. Gentle now, lest your sad cooing reveal the love I hide,
the sorrow I hide away (p.6)

Throughout Bewildered there is a wounded heart, grieving lost love, searching for it again. We see the efforts of translation to preserve aspects of the culture of the original language. These translations searching for the balance between what has to be sacrificed-in this case the rhyme scheme of the Arabic that cannot be replicated in English, and what must remain-the arc of the love poems, the longing for a supreme being, the delve into minute and grand aspects of human emotion inherent throughout.

From this interview with Michael A Sells and Simone Fattal:

Michael: So the cycle starts with bewilderment and it ends with it. My view is that this concept of bewilderment is central for all Ibn 'Arabi's thought, and it comes up again and again in the poems. There is bewilderment because one does not understand what is going on. And there is bewilderment because this is the place where one is confronting things which for human beings are essentially bewildering because they are at the boundary point between the finite and the infinite. That is what great love is, and that is what the religious path is.

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giovanni singleton's "AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper" in this month's SPD HandPicked

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Gentle now, doves of the thornberry and moringa thicket, don't add to my heart-ache your sighs. Gentle now, lest your sad cooing reveal the love I hide, the sorrow I hide away (p.6) Throughout Bewildered there is a wounded heart, grieving lost love, searching for it again.

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AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper (I) by giovanni… | Poetry Magazine

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Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 100-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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Mystery, creativity, inspiration —these are the words that come to
mind when we think about certain aspects of poetry that are separate
from craft.

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Wake up, greet the sun, and pray.

Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage-

sacred herbs to honor the lives we've been given,

for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time.

Remember, when you step into the arena of your life,

think about those who stand beside you, next to, and with you.

Your ancestors are always in your corner, along with your people.

When we enter this world we are born hungry,

our spirits long for us to live out our traditions

that have been passed down for generations.

Prayer, ceremony, dance, language-our ways of being.

Never forget you were put on this earth for a reason-

Be a good relative.

Illustration by Colin Laurel

Source: Poetry (March 2021)

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Being by Tanaya Winder | Poetry Magazine

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Wake up, greet the sun, and pray. Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage- sacred herbs to honor the lives we've been given, for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time. Remember, when you step into the arena of your life, think about those who stand beside you, next to, and with you.

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"Centuries before the surrealists or theirimmediate predecessors, people of all cultures placed a high importance on dreams and visions as a means to spiritual knowledge."

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"Centuries before the surrealists or theirimmediate predecessors, people of all cultures placed a high importance on dreams and visions as a means to spiritual knowledge."

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Pitiful brother-the dreadful nights I owed him! "I've got no real involvement in the business. I toyed with his weakness, so-it was my fault-we wound up back in exile and enslavement."

He saw me as a loser, a weird child; he added his own prods.

I answered my satanic doctor, jeering, and made it out the window. All down a landscape crossed by unheard-of music, I spun my dreams of a nighttime wealth to come.

After that more or less healthy pastime, I'd stretch out on a pallet. And almost every night, soon as I slept, my poor brother would rise-dry mouth and bulging eyes (the way he'd dreamt himself!)-and haul me into the room, howling his stupid dream.

Truly convinced, I'd vowed to take him back to his primal state-child of the sun-and so we wandered, fed on wine from the caves and gypsy bread, me bound to find the place itself and the code.

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Vagabonds by Arthur Rimbaud | Poetry Magazine

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Pitiful brother-the dreadful nights I owed him! "I've got no real involvement in the business. I toyed with his weakness, so-it was my fault-we wound up back in exile and enslavement." He saw me as a loser, a weird child; he added his own prods.