Landscape with Visual History Centuries Later
I am not here
to conquer
this field of
q’úx q’úx q’úx
xattát: ’íske ɬéep-1
ɬep:2
hím’pe
puhuhúx—3
1 [the sound of] clouds / torn [in the hands]: like butterflies
2 [gone] butterflies:
3 in the mouth / a landscape [after a light snowfall]—
Michael Wasson is Nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Lenore, Idaho. He earned a BA from Lewis-Clark State College and an MFA from Oregon State University. The author of Swallowed Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2022), Self-Portrait with Smeared Centuries (Éditions des Lisières, 2018), translated by Beatrice Machet, and This American Ghost (YesYes Books, 2017), Wasson is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in Literature, the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, and others. He currently lives in Japan.
Header photo by LedyX, courtesy Shutterstock.
