by Fred Wah

In Chinook wawa we could say
“wake kunjih yaka chako halo”

Indelible

we could say “Wake” meaning “No”
while Calamity Creek moans

remember Nowitka said yes
to “upholding the wild” (lemolo)

we could say that
what could we not say
won’t stop saying that place

Never will it become gone
“wake kunjih yaka chako halo”

by Fred Wah

East side of Kootenay Lake
across from Ainsworth Hot Springs
one neighbor one wife
two deer then 5 deer
pair of osprey on pilings
Canada geese still hanging around esp. at 4:30 am
moma wild turkey with about 6 chicks
a few raven and gulls
hummingbirds
only 1 bear poop on road
a couple hornets, no bees
quite a few fir down from recent storm
creek already past high mark
lake coming up about 6-9 inches a day

beckoned
by the smoke tree
“a kind of accomplishment”
chain saw

she gathers the stories
that will clear the fallen fir
is this one of those that will
remember the future
moma turkey’s 8 chicks
in the dream learn to talk
to the geese
then mess around in the undergrowth. shitting

as she listens for the one she lost

by Fred Wah

the “I” might be simple
located down the line
to fall to wake up
the old log trips
limb is to stub as bark is to chain

don’t think social norm or lex
leg is on the cliff too
manna on the bushes
not up nor way back down
extra universal joints

clothe nothing with preps
the syntax is no bone
how fine grammar dies
the larch hurts more than
Law capitalized meaning

self-vex your self so salt
tongue acrid and stuck
middle voice emptied
this bruise these stones
the way out Plato said?

simply to enter head
elbow tenoned soft
wood market smash
trade talk for action jump
on this empty venture

by Fred Wah

Wave of a golden era
fractured bloom of flood
sweep of scalar project
shun roar of capital amble

Pow, the geon glows and bonds,
economy along with the usual
mature lies

Not gastrointestinal
tract, not bill, but massive
flood, dust to follow
war bonds teach the future
basin of the possible
telegram across the prairies

Expand power means joy
meant simulacrum boom
investment factors manual
an afternoon of long shadows

River will river will
want a lot of neighbors
countries too demand
keen dream. Potent
every drop.

Begin the sidewall of memory
cutbank of the coulee
Interglacial Missoula 77 gas
speeds tears of great grass
left behind.

Early scape of genealogy beckons
language of another family
diaspora sedimentary rock hard
o tell an ocean, left to bob

Between the raw lakes
between the creeks
creek current builds
its different silence
buzzes the ravines

Thought starts in this shape
the water makes sculpt
holds that early information
strongest love
done.

Little hidden graph of itself
owns its own measure.
Nothing in its way is a mistake
not isolate
the rocks beneath
intentional waves, be whirls
invert the floor of floating worlds
another culvert for the story.

Downstream basalt still news
in the middle of the voice
ebb and tongue

*A geon is a nonsingular electromagnetic or gravitational wave which is held together in  a confined region by the gravitational attraction of its own field …