Michelle Bonczek Evory is the author of The Art of the Nipple (Orange Monkey Publishing, 2013) and the forthcoming Open SUNY Textbook Naming the Unameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations. Her poetry is featured in the 2013 Best New Poets Anthology and has been published in over seventy journals and magazines, including Crazyhorse, cream city review, Green Mountains Review, Orion Magazine, and The Progressive. She holds a PhD from Western Michigan University and MFA from Eastern Washington University, taught most recently at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and mentors poets at The Poet’s Billow (thepoetsbillow.com).---------
In Hidatsa
In Hidatsa they called her
“bird woman,” Sacagawea,
her brother’s voice fading
“grass maiden,” Boinaiv, into the night.
Her black hair was as long as this
night, stolen from her people, galloping
until sunrise when she could for the first
time see this man’s streaked face
who had taken her
hair around his wrist like a rope
and pulled her whole body
onto the back of his painted horse.
Had she been a bird, she would’ve
pecked his dark eyes like seeds.
Boinaiv! They rode too fast for her
to look back. She had to lean into
the heat of her enemy’s body, spread
her legs around his horse, clasp
his waist, open her lungs to breathe
his stench. For many snows, each time
her new name called, she wished
she had let go, had let her body crash
to the grass like a moon, before
it, too, learned how to break
into darkness, and return.