"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.