Poems by Mose Graves

A Native New Yorker Speaks

by Mose Graves

From Canary Summer 2022

Mose currently resides on the lush lands of the Duwamish people near the headwaters of the Sammamish River, along the banks of Issaquah Creek, behind the Taco Bell.

It’s not the killing it’s the waste—
meat, bones, hide.

We are prized here only for our teeth
and the magic dance we do
to keep from diving under subways.

The sun is my father.
The moon is my mother.
The snake is my brother.
We share one hole

smoke sulfur on the Hudson
stoke the sweat lodge of the Bronx
trap beaver pelts at 69th and Lexington
cop nickel bags of powdered elk horn
near the sacred lake in Prospect Park

whatever turns you on.
Yadda yadda yadda!

The first man was Hopi.
He learned from Coyote
the secret of the seven worlds
of which this is the fourth, now ending.

“Hey! Hey mista! Which way to Columbus?”
the Potorikan kid wants to know.

I wake before dawn
splash my face at the sink
while outside steam rises
through the sewer covers

like spirits escaping their burial mounds.
Running Water is my warrior name.

© Mose Graves

Drought

by Mose Graves

From Canary Summer 2022

Time was a river ran through this land,
dousing the acres of doubt between plow and plant
like an endless caravan of answers
and there wasn’t a question—
“Wheat or straw? Corn or crows?”
too shrewd for any man to understand.

So don’t tell me, “Maybe tomorrow…” this sorry patch
of sullen air will shed a tear for us.
The rooster died the week the well ran dry and now
only the split-second insects scissor and saw
in the yard where my eggless hens scratch
their hieroglyphic epitaphs in the dust.

A half a dozen summer months and not a drop of rain.

Lost my hope you say? Well, yeah, I guess.
Could be it just kinda whispered away, day by day,
inch by inch, the richest topsoil in the state
vanished, like sand in an hourglass.
Or my wife, she might of packed it when she left
(called me a fool for staying here, to boot!)
along with my pride and everything else
worth working for. For pity’s sake,
I could eat my weight in bitter roots
without a lick of butter,
but I’ll be damned if for the life of me
I don’t ache like an open grave,
just praying for thunder—

melons rotten before they’re ripe
split open like skulls on a battlefield
while lizards skittering through the wiry vines
skirmish with spiders and skeletal stalks
rattle their bones in the wind.

Like to make a man go flashflood mad
to wake with his head still damp with dreams
and see that flaming insane sun
escape asylum in the East,
rise and set fire to its bed
of low-lying clouds that scatter like frightened geese
or turn to ash above his slowly smoking rows…

Each morning I fill up my pockets with rocks
casting them after me as I walk
pretending they are seeds
but only my shadow grows
longer

with every step I take.

© Mose Graves

Lease Agreement

for Eva Theodora

“Here in this room there is only time and the space my body fills.”
Etta Blum, “The Space My Body Fills”

by Mose Graves

From Canary Summer 2022

Prior to your arrival,
before you fled that airless cave
for this address,

the space you now occupy
was never vacant. In the beginning,
pyroclastic boulders

bobbed like croutons in a hot
metal soup; so much pressure, so much
suppressed anger!

Then fire turned to flood, and for eons
immense creatures of vague, mutable beauty
moved through these rooms.

We were all astonished when
the mountains sloughed off their muddy pajamas
and donned green jackets.

That was a party! True trees,
100-foot ferns, sponge moss underfoot,
mycorrhiza

tying the ginkgos’ shoelaces
together and everyone, more or less, getting along…
Naturally,

the criminal element muscled in:
lizard-brained galoots, gorillas for the mob.
Nobody you’d want to meet.

The current residents are
squirrelly, too. A fun-loving bunch, really,
but watch your back—

from one day to the next
you never know whose blood is up, whose blood
will stain the stones.

We hope you like the light,
the restful shadows, how the dew winks in the bright
grass at dawn.

The gingkoes are still around, and
most of the insects. Maid service, however, has been
discontinued,

and the weather needs repair.
Don’t fret. The rules are posted. You’re home now. You’re here
for a reason.

Meals are on your own.