"ANADROMOUS"

BY SUZANNE S. RANCOURT

I’m grateful to the Ancestors who visit in dreams, curl around my 

ankles like cat tails while standing at the kitchen sink.  Rain came in 

sometime between 0100 and 0200.  0711 I don’t see any birds and 

recall “rain before seven done by eleven,” and “when the birds are 

feeding in the rain, the rain it ain’t gonna stop.” Then, there is my 

cranium barometer. Prayers that good black soul coffee will correct. 

Owl visited again last night with single swallowed yodels 

gulped into gullets holding bone and hair digesting the good bits, 

packed into pellets to be puked out for yet more creatures to 

consume.  Someone’s shit is someone’s glory.

Hyenas of the north, all feeding on what they can. I’m not a 

Hallmark poet. I’m blessed, or cursed, or both with observational 

nuances, vocabularic struts, brilliant gusts combined with syntactic 

dalliance just to tell you a story, just to say, the salmon never left. 

Suzanne S. Rancourt – a poet / author / of Abenaki / Huron, Quebecois & Scottish descent – is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army.  Her books include Songs of Archilochus (Unsolicited Press, 2023); Old Stones, New Roads (Main Street Rag, 2021); murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, 2019), winner of the 2023 Poetry of Modern Conflict Award; Billboard in the Clouds (Curbstone Books, 2004), awarded the Native Writers First Book Award.   Her poetry, non-fiction, and fiction have appeared in a host of journals and magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, The Brooklyn Review, River Heron Review, Tupelo Press Native Voices Anthology, Bright Hill Press 25th Anniversary Anthology, Muddy River Poetry Review, Ginosko, Journal of Military Experience, and Callaloo