ANWR

By Sherwin Bitsui b. 1975 Sherwin Bitsui

When we are out of gas,

a headache haloes the roof,

darkening the skin of everyone who has a full tank.

I was told that the nectar of shoelaces,

if squeezed hard enough,

turns to water and trickles from the caribou’s snout.

A glacier nibbled from its center

spiders a story of the Southern Cross,

twin brothers

dancing in the back room lit with cigarettes

break through the drum’s soft skin—

There bone faces atlas

a grieving century.

Sherwin Bitsui, “ANWR” from Shapeshift. Copyright © 2003 by Sherwin Bitsui. Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press. This material is protected from unauthorized downloading and distribiution.

Source: Shapeshift (The University of Arizona Press, 2003)

Biography

Sherwin Bitsui, a Diné (Navajo) from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, received an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. He is the author of the poetry collections Shapeshift (2003) and Flood Song (2009).

Steeped in Native American culture, mythology, and history, Bitsui’s poems reveal the tensions in the intersection of Native American and contemporary urban culture. His poems . . .

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