Stomp Dance: Two-Spirit Gathering. A Giveaway Poem

Short video from Mangos with Chili's "RECLAIMING THE RITES: performance honoring the sacred of our queer and trans of color lives." Poem published in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought (Fall 2012). Chip Livingston, Editor.
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Captions by: the Radical Access Mapping Project

Stomp Dance: Two-Spirit Gathering
A Giveaway Poem

Especially for Michael St. Claire, 1952-2012.

After the Indian drag queens and kings
shake their booties to Adele and Lady Gaga,

chairs are spirited away
to clear the floor for stomp dance.

Silver milk cans and brown-yellow turtle shells

are strapped to strong legs
even without the sacred fire.

We spiral, counter-clockwise, tight as a snake,
to rebalance the earth.

We carry our ancestors with us.

Our bodies baskets that hold water.

I want my sweetheart with me
to see these songs water my resistance.

I want his voice singing behind me.

I want him to see me shake daksiyusd
under my blue and white skirt,

my heels sore from hitting concrete instead of earth.

I want my sister and mom to see these other southeastern Two-Spirits

and my nieces and nephews to hear folks talk our language like wildfire as it rolls through the Ozarks.

I want Colin here to joke through aches.

Sure, each year I shell out too much money to drive to Oklahoma,

but it's the only time I can shake shells
or hear Laura in her rainbow fingerwoven sash

remind us that the world began
with water and earth

or Jayce show us we have a place around the fire.

I drove nine hours from Texas to get here.

My muscles shake with exhaustion and pain

but I dance every dance,

imagine our spirits as splints of light locked together.

The Milky Way is a white path we follow
to carry earth back to our mother mounds

and when we dance, stories are unearthed
we didn't know we lost.

In the gravel parking lot I talk with Mary Lou

about the hot shell of grief we carry
after our loved ones die

and how we both find our spirits
in love after loss.

Usdi Tewa says those howls in the dark hills are mountain lions.

Water and salt pour from my forehead

as Wa-de teaches me to lead a song
and shake at the same time.

I'm clumsy and dizzy but the dancers are patient
as smoldering fire

as I struggle to balance shake and sing.

There is fire in our hearts
so I try to ignore the voice in my head saying,

*What on earth are you doing?*

and listen to Wa-de in my right ear,

not let my voice shake as I try to lead songs
I've only ever sang in response

while setting the rhythm for shell shakers.

Some say we can't do these things,

but I remember the story of water spider and how she carried that hot coal on her back anyway.

I know the spirits of Susan and Grandmother Frieda watch.

This is the work of our Two-Spirit people.

To sing. To shake. To listen.

To remember the world needs our fire
if any human is to survive.

We hold oceans and springs
in the water of our bodies.

We are part of a story that does not end
with the destruction of the earth,

but instead where everything returns to us
through turtle shells and songs.

When we dance Manifest Destiny shakes.

We are the spirit of water and earth.

We are an emergence of fire and turtle shells.

We are the ones the world can no longer shake.