 Chokmoshki Kim and everybody for coming out. Yeah, I guess just as a little bit of a background, I'm Chukasaw from Oklahoma, and my various interest in education and having a job have taken me to lots of different states and lots of different places. And so a lot of my poems will speak to that and what it's like to be an Indigenous academic in the fields of linguistics and anthropology. So, thank you. Ceremony of Rending. The most beautiful place in the world is a grove of trees in the hills of northeastern Oklahoma, between a waterfall and two acre-sized ponds. It was not easy to leave those woods. 12 years ago, I performed a ceremony of Rending, the swaying of my bow shifting ever stronger against the soil around my toes, but the red clay gripped firm and no amount of twisting could loose it. I threw my weight east and west, then north and south, until the howl of ripping trunk from roots tore through the night. There was nothing left to do but cut off my branches to move quicker across land and water, peel off my bark to write letters for people who will never even see my grove, burn my leaves to keep warm in far-off winters and carve myself into a pole that would separate twins. Stand me in the ground and I will point your way. I am always leaning home. Our film director is there. Ofi Tobi Ijina, The White Dog's Way. I didn't carry my ancestors' bones with me to this midwestern place. I could not hear their voices. I asked Rabbit to carry a note to them, but he baked them into cookies and ate them with rose-hit tea. I asked Woodpacker to pound a note for them in cedar but the songs could not cross the Mississippi. I scratched a song in four lines for our ancestors. I will have a lullaby of yarn for our descendants and a stomp for all of us moving counterclockwise in between. Finally, in the still of night, cicada buzzed answers in a tree beside my ear. We left our bones because we do not need them to dance along The White Dog's Way. You do not need them to dance along beneath us. All right, this one's a little more lively. Real Indian, ABC. According to someone we all know, real Indians don't adapt or break tradition. Don't call out racism, misogyny, and privilege. Don't date white, black, Mexican women. Don't have ebony skin or blue eyes. Don't fight disenrollment or get college degrees. No hablan español. Don't identify as gay, trans, genderqueer, true spirit. Don't jam to death metal, hip hop, or classical music. Don't study Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Never live off res, especially not in cities. Don't march in pride parades or need to get tested. Wouldn't operate casinos or preach the Bible. Never question their elders or tribal leaders. Don't receive per caps or get sex reassignment surgery. Wouldn't teach outsiders our languages. Don't use condoms or need sunblock. Don't validate our freedmen. Don't watch sci-fi or read X-Men. Definitely don't yawn during sunrise ceremonies and have zero interests in anthropology. They are full of shit. Nothing personal in that one at all. We leave home. We leave home because somehow it seems easier for the punches, slurs, and spit to be coming from strangers instead of the people we've known our whole lives. We leave home because there are only three other queer people in this town and two of them are dating each other. We leave home because the three other queer people in this town are tall or loud or masculine or feminine of center and we crave short or shy or butch or femme in a hundred shades not found here. Or they are our cousins. We leave home because as a wise friend once told me if you walk into a bar and have dated more than three of the people there it's time to move to a new city. We leave home because everyone says the city is full of sin and danger and people who break all the rules and it is already dangerous for us here and the rest sounds wonderfully enticing. We leave home because even though the Sunday school teacher has been cheating on his wife with the scorekeeper of his son's baseball team for years we are the ones going to hell and we've learned from experience that the phrase we'll pray for you is not kind. It's the most vicious version of the southern flesh or heart. We come home. We come home because it can be hard to connect to people who have never hauled hay in the August heat. Never defied nature by climbing up to the roof instead of down into a cellar when the tornado sirens went off and been rewarded with the most spectacular view. We come home because sometimes it helps to know that the person throwing punches and slurs comes from a home where their father beats everyone smaller than them and so in a way with each strike they are claiming you as family in the only way they know how. We come home because the younger ones need to see people who are like them and if everyone leaves there will always only be three of us in every small town. We come home because even when they rail against us and who we are and who we love or who we do or don't worship they can't deny we are a part of them. The red clay between all of our childhood toes is binding as blood and just as impossible to wash out. This was written November 21st, 2016 which was in the kind of heart of the pipeline protests in 2016. It's called Apocalypse Journals. It is the 21st day of the 11th month of the 524th year of the apocalypse and the tobacco plant is blooming. As I poured water into soil I lean forward to ask the pale pink petals how can you flower in all this chaos? She didn't hesitate to answer. My child, it is the only time to bloom. Each season is dangerous in its own ways and if you hold your breath until it is safe you will suffocate, it is always the apocalypse. Four directions? There is only one direction and its names are here, now or me and it doesn't matter which one you use because those are all the same word. There are only two directions, toward home and away, being defined by family and soil that understand my features or strangers who can only pretend to. There are only three directions, past, present, future and no matter what those textbooks tell you they never meet but run on tracks in opposite directions. There are only four directions. I have worn out the roads to home from all of them filled up the pages of my grandmother's address book until she gave up and used post-it notes to hold my place instead. There is only one direction, its name is home and I am never there and I have never left. Goodbye. This letting go is not the open palm so a butterfly can fly free. It is the cutting off of a limb trapped between two rocks on the third day without water. This goodbye is not a tearful kiss knowing we are heading off to brighter futures. It is the underwater uncurling of fiercely gripped fingers from the arm of someone who is drowning too because you can't get both of you to the surface. This letting go is not the dusting of hands after a job well done. It is the giving up of something that will never fully come to be. Something that will never give back the time and heart poured into it. There will be no happy reunion down the road, no archeological expositions in wonder and awe. This absence is not a fawn sigh for the one that got the way. It is the memory that has old rib fractures to keep you from forgetting. A flinch, a phantom limb, a scar that stopped the bleeding but also stopped the ability to feel. This letting go is not a butterfly set free but it is still goodbye. This is submergence and it is set in response to Joy Harjo and a line from her amazingly more crazy bribe where she says, if you fight water, you drown. Most days I struggle to catch ragged breath above the surface. A crawdad's call reminds me I was born underwater. I need only to relax, slip below, and breathe with hidden gills. Academic sideshow woman. Dear mom, I've run away to join the circus. They say I'm just what the show needs. I will travel far and wide. I'll be famous. You'll see when the circus comes back to town. Come one, come all. To be shocked and amazed by the bearded woman, the tattooed lady, a savage on display. My tattoos will come to life when I dance for tinted crowds. I will braid my beard into shapes they can recognize. They will count themselves lucky to have seen my kind in person. Has there ever been such a show? They will charge extra. Dear mom, I have run away to join the academy. They say I'm just what the campus needs. I will travel far and wide. I'll be famous. You'll see when the conference comes back to town. Come one, come all. To be shocked and amazed, the working-class professor, a two-spirit scholar, an Indian in academe. My words will come to life when I dance for review committees. I will braid my queerness into shapes they can recognize. They will count themselves lucky to add my numbers to diversity tallies. Has there ever been such a show? I will charge extra. Two more here. Bone songs. Being the first native in this department is just another word for only. But I am not really the first one here. These halls used to hold my ancestors whole, but now favor cells and scrapings. Horse nation, canine nation, primate nation. We are all gathered here in boxes and slides. If I sang the bone songs, they would all sing back to me. I have lined this office with plants, books by southeastern women, two-spirit art, and Indian comics. Sometimes I find the echoes of my people here comforting. At least they tell jokes with the same intonation. No removal cuts bone deep, the longing for home and resistance to shovels and scalpels of loneliness. I am here to call this story, paper, lecture into being. Peel the bark from my flesh to bite the patterns of my thoughts. Weave the honeysuckle vines so resistant to squared pages. Type the beads onto cloth in the traditional patterns of paragraphs, columns, chapters. Mother prayers to do this in a good way, a kind way. Pray that no one will inspect the backside where the disorder of streams betrays my shaking hands. When they sing the bone songs, I will sing back to them. And a bit of fun. So this one is, most of these are in my book, but my book is titled Trickster Academy. This is a seat at the trickster table, and with this I will leave you. I arrived hungry to the feast, invitation clutched in hand, but something seems off. There are only tricksters around this table. I can't look too closely at the center offering in case I recognize the face. It's a well-kept secret, but even the most respectable animals will eat one another if the season is right. They just hide their blood-soaked lips behind fine linen napkins. I spent so long learning to use the cutlery from the outside in, butternife on its own plate, but the buzzard at the head of the table has no need for such utensils. And the rabbit to his right eats everything with a dessert fork. I could leave, but I spent years sewing this dress. This isn't the fashion back home, and I still owe so much for the fabric. Besides, I'm hungry. I traveled too far to turn back now on an empty stomach. They don't give these invitations to everyone. Just ask the guy they're serving onto plates. I guess there's nothing left to do, but claim the seat between fox and crow. Grow my nails long to pick apart the bones. Even the gentlest of beasts will eat flesh if the season is right.