One of the
characteristics of Native writing is its immediate engagement with history. A corollary
is the simultaneity of past, present, and future. Mi’kmaq Métis author Alice Azure, in her new book Games of Transformation, illustrates the
fluidity of time. The entire book is about the pre-contact city Cahokia, a
trade city just off the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Over a hundred mounds
remain, despite farming.
The poem “Moon
of Blinding Snow” starts with a winter
scene, then shifts into another dimension. This poem begins with strong
imagery, as “snow and sleet whack at my house.” This is a typical Midwestern
scene. Then it shifts, in the second stanza, to the time of Cahokia. She
describes the winters of those days, and their cost in fuel. This shifts into
contemporary worries about the future. As winter season begins in the Midwest,
this poem has important alarms for everyone. It also asserts a Native presence.
Critic Siobhan
Senier writes of Games of Transformation:
“she subverts the US national imaginary by calling into being a Native
community and a Native future” (MELUS 37.1,2012).
Moon of Blinding Snow
Layers of
sweaters don’t keep me warm
as snow and
sleet whack at my house.The cat and I hunker down in front
of our wood-burning fireplace,
while the weatherman announces
record-breaking snow.
After Cahokia’s
five thousand campfires
burned day and
night for two hundred years,after the trees were gone from the land,
how did the ancients keep themselves arm?
After the ice caps, ethanol and oil go bust,
will the polar bears, cat and I
be lucky to find enough dry land
to sustain trees and corn—a fire or two?
