Tiffany Midge is the recipient of the Kenyon Review Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry for The Woman Who Married a Bear (forthcoming) and the Diane Decorah Memorial Poetry Award for Outlaws, Renegades and Saints: Diary of a Mixed-up Halfbreed (Greenfield Review Press). Her work has appeared in North American Review, The Raven Chronicles, Florida Review, South Dakota Review, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest and the online journals No Tell Motel and Drunken Boat. An enrolled Standing Rock Sioux, she holds an MFA from University of Idaho and lives in Moscow, Idaho (Nez Perce country).
The Foolish Girls
Two very foolish and lazy girls seduced an old white star, and a young red star.
They went to live with their new lovers in the star world. ~Plains’ Indian legend
Sister claimed the young star—chokecherry red.
When a baby she swallowed a moth and since
wanted wings. I took the white who wheezed
when I rode him, coughed out stories from his chest—
unfathomable worlds strung like pretty beads.
All compelling yet confused. My blood’s a charm
consumed by salt and the sweetest fat.
Our hearts dished out their darkest jams.
Seasons passed. I wondered. What hungers
did we try to avoid from the lands below?
Here, Sister wears a rag, her beauty eclipsed
by her glittering lover. Here, the stars keep
white bones stashed in a pile. While the stars
sleep the bones rattle and teethe.