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From: Vol.07 N.02 – Writing in the Pause

Lung Mask

by 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 

Published: October 2020
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.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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