Brad Simkulet's Blog, page 24
October 29, 2016
October 24, 2016
October 20, 2016
silverfish at the end of time (2.14)
i try focusing on the batteries between my toes,
as though hanging on to them,
not letting them roll free, then drop
amongst the nocturnal silverfish
can divert my consciousness away from the shiver.
my shiver exists at the end of all hope,
the place i have existed for a decade or more,
possibly less, but who can remember
when faced with the darkest, bleakest
past - present - future.
October 16, 2016
having read three day road (2.13)
I am wemistikoshiw, so I don’t and won’t pretend to understand
what it is to be Oji-Cree – nor any other nation for that matter. I
pass no judgment on their beliefs, their lives, their experiences, their
ways, but I do feel the great of weight personal disgust and guilt all wemistikoshiw should feel for the genocide of their peoples and cultures our ancestors began, which we carry on every day.
I’ve
been the lover of a Cree woman, a woman I still love and always will,
but I have no illusions that my love for her makes me any less wemistikoshiw,
any less culpable for what has been done to the proud nations she
sprang from. The most I can ever hope to attain is empathy, an
incomplete understanding, and a heart willing to hear Indigenous stories
coupled with a resolve to do what I can when I can.
Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road is, I think, an Indigenous story gifted to we wemistikoshiw (at least in part).
As
Boyden spoke through Niska and Xavier and Elijah, and as the voices of
Niska and Xavier made Boyden fade away, I began to hear whispers of “let
me tell you this wemistikoshiw” and “have you thought of this wemistikoshiw” and “don’t ignore this wemistikoshiw” because what I was being told, what the whispers were speaking of, were things too important to be ignored.
Yes there is a terrifying and even sometimes thrilling tale of trench warfare in World War I in the foreground of Three Day Road,
but there is so much more being told to us. It is telling us about the
end of a way of life. I may think it was a beautiful way of life, others
may think it was backwards, still others may think it was “heathen,”
but what really matters is that it was a way; it was valuable; it
deserved better. It is a story of how that way was ended, of the ways
colonization tore down, took away, raped, brainwashed, manipulated,
murdered or slowly eroded through attrition. It is the effects and
affects of colonization and how there is no post-colonial period for
Indigenous North Americans. There is only colonization. Niska and Xavier
are whispering these things to the wemistikoshiw because we need
to hear them and do more than hear them. We need to take them into our
everyday lives. To look in the mirror at our own wemistikoshiw visages and see all of those whispers written there.
Three Day Road
is rich with meaning, bursting into the mud like the largest shells
Fritz could throw at the lines, and I doubt that the multiple readings I
am sure to give this novel will ever allow me to tap into them all. And
maybe, perhaps, this first reaction that I’ve written here is the best
and most important meaning I will ever take away from Three Day Road – maybe knowing that I am wemistikoshiw, knowing and recognizing that, is exactly what the story needed me to know.
October 12, 2016
(2.12)
the tip of my prick
swollen, satiny, heavy
in need of your tongue
October 11, 2016
(2.11)
i don’t remember why i was digging, but i remember my fingernails clawing at cool dirt beneath wet grass in the moonlight. i was on a hill where i grew up, but damned if i can remember what hill. the one in my backyard? the one in my front? the one heading to my school? likely one of those three, but i can’t remember. what i remember as clearly as if it is happening now is the tension of force against my nails as the earth and the weed we call grass are invading the space between my skin and my keratin as i scrabble them away from the hole i am digging. i can feel the dew wetting my knees, so it must be near dawn but the sun isn’t up yet; since i am digging into one of those three hills, i know that it is still some form of night – the sun comes over those hills in the morning. the chill is bringing on a shiver and the smell of decaying leaves, the scent of autumn death, is just out there tickling my senses. i shiver again, but i am not sure it’s from the cold. i have no idea what i am digging up. or is it burying? but i am here doing it. i need that little tool that folds out of mom’s nail clippers to dig out the dirt. or maybe the nail brush in the shower. i miss that brush. i close my eyes as my clean nails type this, i sigh and try to conjure the objective of my digging. all i can recall are sensations. nothing more. i am feeling a tug to return someday, somemorn, somenight.
"We make each other alive. Does it matter if it hurts?"
- Ingmar Bergman, from a letter to Liv Ullmann (via 13neighbors)
(2.10)
you said i hurt you, and even after all this time i dwell on that hurt. i want to make it up to you, i want to make amends, yet i can’t help feeling that my intentions, which were so the reverse of the pain i caused, should have some significance too. your feelings are valid, yes, but just because your feelings are feelings of hurt doesn’t necessarily mean my feelings should be invalidated, does it? my feelings were feelings of kindness. my hope was to share my heart. shouldn’t that count for something? you said i hurt you. i don’t doubt that, and i am sorry, but i never wanted to hurt you, i didn’t mean too, i loved you.
October 9, 2016
sublimity, part i (2.9)*
oases of the sublime no longer swell.
but contract with each man wrought knell.
oozing landscapes are everywhere scarred,
not an hint of midgard remains unmarred.
brokkr’s smithy: long ash, glacially cold
conjures nothing artful on the barren wold.
it was past arctic ice, but become cataract,
ripping new wounds: deep, pained, inexact.
she paddled her way here, long upstream,
ignorant of her presence in the living dream
so her misstep could surely be forgiven
as she slip-tripped into the wound freshly riven.
bare feet: one, two, splashing into current;
gushing ice water: her skin cold burnt
staggering up, fighting the slip-fall down,
she willed herself upon that mossy crown.
she cries to fjörgyn, begging for ease
and – whispering succour – answers the breeze.
*another draft
October 8, 2016
no one walks away, part ii (2.8)
The afternoon blinded him the moment he passed from the air conditioning to the asphalt heat that slammed into the bare skin of his lower legs. It was enough that by the time he’d followed her to the car and was fully adjusted to the change in light, wishing that he’d worn his sunglasses, he found himself facing G—.
G— wasn’t on his death bed. He was there in front of him in the parking lot, and she was disappearing into the driver’s side of a black SUV. His eyes followed her in disbelief at being fooled. He couldn’t look at G— yet. His infuriating stupidity made him track her until the dull thunk of the door sealed her away. He looked at G— and sighed.
“This is excessive.”
“I am going to kick your ass,” G— said, putting on his best tough guy face. That face had made him laugh in the past, but not any more – not since the crazy had become a permanent part of G—’s eyes. G— balled his fists and lunge stepped forward, trying to make him flinch. He retreated to match G—’s movement and raised his arms to block any incoming punch. Nothing came yet.
“You fucking faked cancer to get me here, G—. What the fuck do you want?”
“To kick your ass.”
“You must have brought me here to say something. Just tell me what you want.”
The crazy in G—’s eyes glinted crazier; without breaking the stare he had him locked in, G— reached out and knocked three quick raps on the tinted glass of the SUV.
Three doors opened. Three men got out. Five seconds after the window knock, he was surrounded, then G— said, “I want you to hurt, you prick.”
