hokte hokte honvnwv
begin here
with the clay she says
under her breath a handful of earth
from silt-bottomed streams
loosens between fingers water
echoes in an empty
bowl hokte
hoktet hecet os
I was birthed of mud blood
and bone hokte
hoktet hecet os
glass globes
inside my tin belly echo of
water in an empty bowl
I remember the sound of her soft
body hokte
hokte honvnwv
Have just begun
to bleed today
thought I might be dying
walked barefoot beyond the backyard
over the cattleguard hokte
hokte honvnwv
each grass blade a rusted
glint in the circular
basin of bison grazing
clay rims the water colored
sky in the empty bowl water
echoes when we walk
horizons shift
how to call them
closer feel their white tufts
between fingertips
hokte
hokte honvnwv
Muscogee language:
hokte: woman
honvnw: man
hecet os: to see
Contributor Notes
“Pottery Lessons” and “Outskirts” are from my “Magdalena” series—a book-length sequence of poems exploring my relationship with America as ghost, landscape, and story. The poems are written in conversation with Magdalena, who may be myself, as I once was, or who may also be America—the land itself—as it once was, and as it has become.
Jennifer Elise Foerster received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts (July 2007) and her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2003). She has received fellowships to attend Soul Mountain Retreat, the Naropa Summer Writing Program, the Idyllwild Summer Poetry Program, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. From 2008-2010, Jennifer was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. Her poetry has been published in Ploughshares, Passages North, Many Mountains Moving, and Drunken Boat, among other journals. Of German, Dutch, and Muscogee descent, she is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. Jennifer lives in San Francisco where she works as a freelancer for non-profit development. She is currently working on a chronicle of poems in Muscogee, German, and English.
