Tributaries: Tawahum Bige + Stages of Tanning Words and Remembering Spells Part One: Scraping Lungs Like Hide

Read “Mending Friendships”
from Stages of Tanning Words and Remembering Spells
Part One: Scraping Lungs Like Hide

Mending Friendships

nitakoten ayiwinisa
ekiskisiyân ekwa ninapwekinen
nimiskan wâpamon
pastipayiw enipâyânihk

I do not see my friend for three moons.
Orcas have died   in the plumes from gas
and unreturned salmon in separated seas.

I nursed and grew attached
to a curable but lethal infection.
My friend used to nurse me,
coax me back from ragged breaths
with spells known to the daughters
of Asclepius. They came at a cost.
I cough asthmatic and tell myself
There’s a problem.       I tell
my newfound comfort, self-pity,
You’re killing me.

White doctor prescribed Promethean pain,
chained to a rock at sea.

My recovery was not quick.

I know I must ask—

glide from seaborne shackles
bid my Hades farewell,
in preparation      for her answer

or the lack thereof. My eyes burn
as they open     from beneath the tide, see
the sun through stained glass liquid, bubbles
float to the surface      where her figure
appears at the edge of the beach.
She pulls me out coughing,

I ask my friend,

Can I match your spells
or the heart it took to cast them?

She hesitates,

I’m only here because the closest to home I can get
is being close to water.

The waves foam
a final Poseidon on the riverbank
but after she swims,
we shake off the sea.

An interview with poet Tawahum Bige

ALU: Has your idea of poetry changed since you began writing?

Tawahum Bige: No, not really. It’s hard to say when something just isn’t a poem. There’s a beauty in the expression, a need to be heard, read, seen—whether poets are crafting the most excellent, 20-draft type work, or a first draft that comes to a poetry slam, the work is ceremony. This also answers question 3 a bit [“What drew you to poetry?”], because I’m drawn to poetry for its healing quality in reclaiming our stories.

ALU: If your collection had a theme song, what would it be?

Tawahum Bige: “Floating Heads” by Sister Crayon – A song about the mantras that keep one calm, the voice that refuses to go back to places of such pain.

Tawahum recommends…
“Transformation” from Jess Housty’s
Crushed Wild Mint (Nightwood Editions)

ALU: Why did you choose Jess Housty’s poem “Transformation” from their collection Crushed Wild Mint? What do you love most about this particular poem?

Tawahum Bige: I have a Scorpio moon, so I am always attracted to transforming. More than that, I know there are cultural entendres to this “Transformation” that Housty writes from that are exciting to see made corporeal. Then, it’s what you would expect of a stellar poet like Jess Housty— crisp imagery around nature, the viscera of processing meat, the insights of being in a different time yet calling on those same ancestors to help us transform.

Transformation

There are mornings
when I feel a non-specific
loneliness
sitting soft and heavy in my bones,

hushing my surroundings
with the weight of estuary silt
and the stillness of salt.

I’d prefer the companionship
of my other forms, my animal selves,
the ones I could speak into being
if I was nimble as an ancestor.

I can’t call that power down—
nor can I sit
with the silence
of my only self.

I imagine the stubble
of pinfeathers,
the different arc
of my bones
if they bent to the posture
of a carnivore.

I grieve for the lost bodies,
the self
that is singular,
that can never become the community
one ancestor might have embodied—
that can never transform.

But then there is my grandmother,
with her strong hands
and their sedge-root veins—
hands that have skinned hundreds,
thousands of ducks
in her lifetime—

When she sends me those ducks now to prepare,
with patience and a little grace from the birds
my hands no longer cramp
as I slip the skin and feathers
away from the meat;

the steam from their guts
in the cool air
makes it easy to imagine
the truth
of how my ancestors transformed—

less an act of becoming
and more an act of believing,
slipping out of our
selves
and into ourselves—

an act
sharp and sweet
as the smell of blood
and half-digested grass.

I understand
that the heart is where you hold your power
and the hands are where you hold your
sacredness,
and with wild meat on your tongue
you might even remember
the animals you become in your dreams.

And the tangle of veins in my hands that slip
between the fat and the meat,
between the copper and the sweetness,
must match the tangle of roots
in an estuary somewhere.

If I carry a likeness
of some small part of the homeland
in my body,
then I hold the possibility
that the imprint of each wolf
or bird
or small, careful creature
that walks across it
may be written on my heart.

And that is enough.

Reprinted with permission from Nightwood Editions.

* * *

Tawahum Bige is a Łutselk’e Dene, Plains Cree poet with a B.A. in creative writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Bige has performed at countless festivals and had poems featured in numerous publications. His land protection work against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion led him to face incarceration in 2020. Bige’s debut poetry collection, Cut to Fortress, was published by Nightwood Editions in 2022, and his second collection, Stages of Tanning Words and Remembering Spells, will be released in April 2025. They reside on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory (Vancouver, BC).

Photo of Tawahum by Sarah Rose (@srosefacekillah).

* * *

Thanks to Tawahum for answering our questions, and to Nightwood Editions for the text of “Mending Friendships” from Stages of Tanning Words and Remembering Spells Part 1: Scraping Lungs Like Hide, which is available to order now (and get 15% off with the code TRIBUTARIES until April 30!). Thanks also to Nightwood for the text of “Transformation” from Jess Housty’s Crushed Wild Mint.

Follow our NPM series all month long to discover new poetry or connect with old favourites, and visit our poetry shop here.