Jake Skeets (Diné) is from the Navajo Nation. He is pursuing an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His work has appeared in Word Riot, The James Franco Review, The Blueshift Journal, and elsewhere. He was the recipient of the 2014 Native Writer Award. Recently, he founded a queer Indigenous magazine that publishes queer Indigenous and queer poets of color, titled Cloudthroat.
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Instructions in the Joints
when mistaken for water
on the kitchen floor,
just boys still. Their grandfathers’
veined hands on the backs
of their necks.
They know tragedy,
each eye a coal pearl
for people they lost.
One’s mother in his hair,
cousins at his teeth.
The other carries his name
like a toothache.
Bloom into saguaro
on their knees on vinyl tile.
Two boys asleep by a stove,
after painting the skin
on the other’s back, an ode
to sky bit down,
scar tissue of inner cheeks.
Just another war,
wars in arm hair, wars
in cutlery, tomatoes.
Instead of a burning,
their names become a cornfield.
DL N8V 4 3SOME
He is crying through his hands, thunder bursts
palmed by sky. Three pairs of limbs woven
into roll clouds, heavy over Mid-May snow. Stretch
marks light on his skin spider down to hip, lightning
bolts against the powder of his sheets beneath us.
His shirt still noosed around his neck, boxers shackled
to ankles. Gasps for air between his cries were fists
punching holes in every wall.
Glittering
third world was gunfire
in a canyon horse
tongue dragged
on salt block
manage to locust
through climb
reeds into a chalk sky
arrive in fourth world
a paler sky flickering
through swarm
of cicada sweat
glistening on stomachs
in a dorm room
spotlights glittering
through bleachers
during men’s fancy
arrive and keep arriving