Blue Mesa Review Issue 41
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Issue 41 Blue Mesa Review Albuquerque, NM Founded in 1989 Issue 41 Spring 2020 Blue Mesa Review is the literary magazine of the University of New Mexico MFA Program in Creative Writing. We seek to publish outstanding and innovative fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, along with compelling interviews. Poems by Joy Harjo, from the book In Mad Love and War, © 1990 by Joy Harjo, published by Wesleyan University press, Middletown CT and used by permission. Blue Mesa Review Logo by Mario Montoya BLUE MESA REVIEW Spring 2020 • Issue 41 Editor Tori Cárdenas Managing Editor Ari McGuirk Associate Editor Mitch Marty Nonfiction Editor Michelle Gurule Fiction Editor Mario Montoya Poetry Editors Darren Donate Seth Garcia Faculty Advisor Mark Sundeen Graduate Readers Mikaela Osler Rhea Ramakrishnan Undergraduate Readers Hyler Kathleen Bowman Jessica Coonrod Kristin Crocker Dominic D. Dix Isaiah Guerra Andrew Gunn Eric T. Knowlson Daniel Landman Isabella Montoya Cody West Jesse Williams Layout and Design Mitch Marty Table of Contents Letter From the Guest Editor 7 Selection of Poems from Joy Harjo For Anna Mae Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live) 9 City of Fire 11 Santa Fe 12 The Book of Myths 13 Transformations 15 Letter From the Editor 17 Nonfiction Pony Legs Ashley Hand 19 Fragile Donkey Molly McCloy 39 Poetry Of Love (not in) Shoshana Tehila Surek 26 Emergency C-Section with Partial Hindsight Ashley Kunsa 37 Aricept Rachel Mindell 46 Fiction Huitzitzilin ire’ne lara silva 27 Art Unity Julianna Bolanos, Tessa Anderson, and Franklin De La Cruz 6, 16, 18 Stargazer Erika Glass 24 Nomenclature Michael Thompson 25 Sunflower 9 Ryan Seo 34 Ray Guns Tara Barr 45 Author Profiles 47 Artist Profiles 49 Issue 41 5 | Issue 41 Unity Julianna Bolanos, Tessa Anderson, and Franklin De La Cruz Blue Mesa Review | 6 Letter from the Guest Editor Dear Readers, This issue of Blue Mesa Review opens with a selection of work by 2019-2020 U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Mr. Anaya founded BMR in 1989, and in 2010 he donated seed money to UNM’s English Department to establish the annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest. The first issue ofBMR debuted 30 years ago and featured the Southwest, and this year we will host our tenth annual lecture featuring Joy Harjo as our distinguished speaker. In collaboration with the editorial board, I present Harjo’s poetry as a reminder of Mr. Anaya’s legacy and the enduring work of our region’s literary luminaries. Joy Harjo will deliver the tenth annual Anaya lecture on October 1, 2020, an award-winning writer, performer, and saxophone player of the Mvskoke/ Creek Nation. Harjo is an alumnae of UNM’s English Department and once served as the Joseph Russo Endowed Professor. As the first Native American to be named the nation’s Poet Laureate, Harjo will bring critical regional attention to the landscape, soundscape, and myth-scape of the Indigenous Southwest, a concept that crosses borders and conventions of sound, scape, and sky. Harjo describes her work best in How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton 2002): “There is no separation between poetry, the stories and events that link them, or the music that holds all together, just as there is no separation between human, animal, plant, sky, and earth” (xxvi). With a local connection to New Mexico and a national reputation as a world-renowned poet, the inclusion of Harjo’s poetry is meant to inspire present and future generations of students with a passion and desire to write. The five poems included in this issue appeared in the 1990 collection,In Mad Love and War, and we would like to thank Suzanna Tamminen with Wesleyan Press for granting us permission to republish. I would also like to thank the BMR editorial board, especially Tori Cárdenas and Mario Montoya, for their collaboration and enthusiasm. I leave you with Harjo’s own words, to inspire the creative endeavor of this and all artistic works, “A story leads to a dream leads to a poem leads to a song and so on” (xxvii). Sincerely, Dr. Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán Associate Professor, UNM English Dept. 7 | Issue 41 UNM English Department Presents the Tenth Annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest featuring the distinguished speaker Photo by Matika Wilbur Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate Author of What Moon Drove Me to This?, In Mad Love and War, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, She Had Some Horses, and Crazy Brave: A Memoir In Collaboration with the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Journal Theater, 1701 4th Street SW Thursday, October 1, 2020 – 7:00 pm Blue Mesa Review | 8 For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit Is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live) Joy Harjo For Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Whose Spirit is Present Here and in the Dappled Stars (for we remember the story and must tell it again so we may all live) Beneath a sky blurred with mist and wind, I am amazed as I watch the violet beads of crocuses erupt from the still earth after dying for a season, as I have watched my own dark head appear each morning after entering the next world to come back to this one, amazed. It is the way in the natural world to understand the place the ghost dancers named after the heart/breaking destruction. Anna Mae, everything and nothing changes. You are the shimmering young woman who found her voice, when you were warned to be silent, or have your body cut away from you like an elegant weed. You are the one whose spirit is present in the dappled stars. (They prance and lope like colored horses who stay with us through the streets of these steely cities. And I have seen them nuzzling the frozen bodies of tattered drunks on the corner.) This morning when the last star is dimming and the buses grind toward the middle of the city, I know it is ten years since they buried you the second time in Lakota, a language that could free you. I heard about it in Oklahoma, or New Mexico, how the wind howled and pulled everything down 9 | Issuein a41 righteous anger. (It was the women who told me) and we understood wordlessly the ripe meaning of your murder. As I understand ten years later after the slow changing of the seasons that we have just begun to touch the dazzling whirlwind of our anger, we have just begun to perceive the amazed world the ghost dancers entered crazily, beautifully. In February 1976, an unidentified body of a young woman was found on the pine ridge reservation in South Dakota. The official autopsy attributed death to exposure. The FBI agent present at the autopsy ordered her hands severed and sent to Washington for fingerprinting. John Trudell rightly called this mutilation an act of war. Her unnamed body was buried. When Anna Mae Aquash, a young Micmac woman who was an active American Indian movement member, was discovered missing by her friends and relatives, a second autopsy was demanded. It was then discovered she had been killed by a bullet fired at close range to the back of her head. Her killer or killers have yet to be identified. the second time in Lakota, a language that could free you. I heard about it in Oklahoma, or New Mexico, how the wind howled and pulled everything down in a righteous anger. (It was the women who told me) and we understood wordlessly the ripe meaning of your murder. As I understand ten years later after the slow changing of the seasons that we have just begun to touch the dazzling whirlwind of our anger, we have just begun to perceive the amazed world the ghost dancers entered crazily, beautifully. In February 1976, an unidentified body of a young woman was found on the pine ridge reservation in South Dakota. The official autopsy attributed death to exposure. The FBI agent present at the autopsy ordered her hands severed and sent to Washington for fingerprinting. John Trudell rightly called this mutilation an act of war. Her unnamed body was buried. When Anna Mae Aquash, a young Micmac woman who was an active American Indian movement member, was discovered missing by her friends and relatives, a second autopsy was demanded. It was then discovered she had been killed by a bullet fired at close range to the back of her head. Her killer or killers have yet to be identified. In February 1976, an unidentified body of a young woman was found on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The official autopsy attributed death to exposure. The FBI agent present at the autopsy ordered her hands severed and sent to Washington for fingerprinting. John Trudell rightly called this mutilation an act of war. Her unnamed body was buried. When Anna Mae Aquash, a young Micmac woman who was an active American Indian movement member, was discovered missing by her friends and relatives, a second autopsy was demanded. It was then discovered she had been killed by a bullet fired at close range to the back of her head. Her killer or killers have yet to be identified. Blue Mesa Review | 10 City of Fire Joy Harjo City of Fire Here is a city built of passion where live many houses with never falling night in many rooms.