Sherwin Bitsui

I stretch dusk

over my face

puncture eyeholes

with coyote teeth,

see wolves

daubed with

wrens’ blood

howling southward;

blue birds nesting

in their ears.

This season’s

splinters, sleepless

in tree rings—ringing,

as drought pecks

into halves

each trickle of tó

Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He is the author of Shapeshift, Flood Song, and Dissolve. His honors include a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of a 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Writers Award. He is on faculty at Northern Arizona University.