Nellie Two Bear Gates: Ekphrastic Writing Responses

Suitcase, by Nellie Two Bear Gates (USA/Lakota People) 1890-1910.. Photograph by Minneapolis Institute of Art employee., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

​ted to the
us-                jo-
tr-                   ur-
En-                   ney
I stitched this suitcase 
as your gift on this distinctive day, a picture of preparedness, 
detailed, pored over, heft of my hug, each bead prayer-sewn.
This suitcase itches for adventure. A tacit traveller, yet I hope 
as you open it, music will emanate: cheers and chinks of cups 
overflowing with teepee bounty, hearty feasts round spit-roast 
campfires, percussive hooves, rattling saddles and pipe bags 
crescendoing down uncharted trails, but mostly the sonorous
bassline of family voices enveloping you like a buffalo poncho.
I bless you, sweet foal, to travel unburdened, ready to move, 
yet knowing deep inside the name embroidered on your skin. 
May you live with open hands, a willing carrier of two cloaks, 
ready to pass them on. May your pine lodge-poles stand firm
under blue skies and especially when dark clouds gather. May 
you craft a legacy of wise deeds that adorn you like a jewelled 
breastplate and may this suitcase go down the line 
with lassoed whoops of joy. 

Helen Freeman 

Helen Freeman started writing whilst recovering from a car crash in Oman and got hooked.  After several courses with The Poetry School she now has publications on several online sites like Ink, Sweat & Tears, Clear Poetry, Ground Poetry, Open Mouse, Algebra of Owls, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and of course The Ekphrastic Review.  She loves trying her hand at some challenges presented here and reading the different interpretations chosen by editors.  She currently lives in Edinburgh and her instagram is @chemchemi.hf 

**
​
​The Trail of the Great Tear

She stares at the valley.
The rock on which she is seated has curled itself tight and hardened from grief.
The sunset, like a golden, hot cheek, is pressed against the girl's cheek.
A few strands of hair from her braided locks wander restlessly in the air.
She is thinking of her grandfather’s death.
And an eagle in the sky plucks its feathers from its own body.
She must go. She must go.
The Mississippi River: A great tear that has left a trail on the earth.  

Marjan Khoshbazan

Marjan Khoshbazan is a writer and poet based in Tehran, Iran, with an academic background in Dramatic Literature. Her work is centered on ekphrasis, driven by the belief that language can render the "costliest images" without the need for colour or form—like a halo of fog in the air of imagination. Having grown up amidst a pervasive environment of censorship and trauma, she views her writing as an essential pursuit of freedom, recognizing that "a bird in a cage values flight more than one in the sky." Her poems are therefore raw, honest, and lack the capacity to withstand censorship. This is her first submission to The Ekphrastic Review, and she extends a hand toward your artistic community.

**
​
​Singing of Places Never Mine

Homesick hardly, no address I miss when
doors bolt. Too ardent absorbing knee-deep 
newsletters, sun-circling Canyons, the blue 
TVs. I used to own a home, live out of a bag

now. I largely buy singles, fill tanks midway, 
in case I need-leave in three days. Florence, 
Oregon here. Small towns seem struck on
coyotes and bears. I deal in 50-mile views. 

Fireside night, an easy draw-in that organics 
onto a borrowed bench nextdoors. Politics
hushed, their marriage ideas, past my truth.
The teacher one brave-changes: I like your 
name means warrior. 

I never fight oceans over trees. He finds a map 
from his truck, and states open up, eating echos 
off their reliving, and I, live along, my know-how 
holds plenty cupboards to love an atlas-travel. 

Both measure me their Dakota past, Badland 
leaves bare, and there, I step into my former 
fate, fueling no sleep for years. I’d love fair
love again, non-patterned parlance, Pasques

blooming. Next day, I border-cross the 101, 
a gold-poppy-welcome. Lying about apples 
in the boot, I never still-stand, till luck turns 
off. Terraced porches, moonslick guestbooks. 
The texts I never send. 

Kate Copeland

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to linguistics & teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for the International Women's Writing Guild. Find her poems @ TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Metphrastics, Hedgehog Press [a.o.], or @ https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/. Kate was born in harbour-city, and adores housesitting in the world. 

**

The Legacy Bag   
          
We stare at this cloth heirloom
featuring figures and symbols. 
Its story stitched by Lakota hands
that have felt ancestral fingers
apply needle and thread
 
Now I open the embroidered bag
and emptiness becomes an echo --
subtle, like the falling dusk.
A chorus we  suddenly hear
as words spill out. The wisdom
of women from our mother's house
binding their breath with ours
as they hum and whisper:
      
Slow burn the forest
to bless mule deer and trees.
The sea surrounds them
with cold water. Stand
on the tortoise. Your hair
the wind's soft shadow
as he tells of  beginnings
when his shell formed
the first mound of earth --
 
later spreading
into islands then continents.
The land became settled
and your earliest life,
your original soul
was spawned here --
 
as White Bead Woman 
who wept for her people 
and the wild creatures
among them --
breaking a dry spell
with rain or dew.
 
Her tears left trembling
on the spider's web
to count and reflect
the green blessings
of  field and wood.

Wendy Howe

Wendy Howe is an English teacher  who lives in  California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, women in conflict and  history. She has been published in the following  journals: The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Corvid Queen, Strange Horizons, The  Otherworld Poetry Journal,  The Acropolis Journal and many others

**

​Contain Her 

I wanted a Hermes bag, but instead he brought me a photo of an embroidered museum repro bag made by the Lakota Indians. Like a kid’s bag except for the silver handle and top locks on either side. Blue whimsy of a purse. A white teepee and pots with no stew and woven rugs drying on a line and a horse with a fancy saddle. Hermes flew away and I longed to be inside the embroidered story, an Indian myself liked I’d pretended after seeing Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man at the Prytania Theater when I was fifteen. How I’d wanted to be kidnapped and taken away from my mother and grandmother who never paid attention to anything but books and dogs. 

I will myself into the tapestry. Pop into the opened silver buckle, seal myself inside and wait for the woman who owned a Hermes bag to fall in love with this bag, this museum bag, and buy it at auction unknowing she’d bought a kid longing to be re-mothered inside. 

Lucinda Kempe
 
Lucinda Kempe’s work is forthcoming in Salvage (China Miéville editor), the Summerset Review, SoFloPoJo, Unbroken Journal, Bull, Does It Have Pockets, Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, and Centaur, among places. An excerpt of her memoir was short listed for the Fish Memoir Prize in April 2021. She lives on Long Island where she exorcises with words. You can find her here: https://lucindakempe.substack.com

**

Lakota Heritage, 1892
 
As a young Indian--
as early white settlers
called us— my people 
lived in the Dakota
territory where tribal
members with lancers
and bows and arrows
hunted plains buffalo
for hides, clothing,
and food sustenance.
At six I was sent 
to an Indian boarding 
school in Missouri
where for eleven years, 
the staff attempted 
to eradicate knowledge 
of my culture. Three 
years after my forced
departure from my home
encampment at Whitestone 
Hill, U.S. forces burned 
the settlement down,
destroying living shelters,
and the winter food supply. 
Today, in honor of my father, 
Chieftain 2-Bear Gates, 
I indulge in beadwork 
to preserve our history 
creating quilt-like portraits 
of ceremonial weddings
and reservation life.
          Sincerely,
Mahpiya Bogawin

Jim Brosnan

A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019), copies available at [email protected]. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review(Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI.

**

Portmanteau

Here's travelogue, a people bagged,
unusual canvas, tribal ware,
a picture postcard, labelled space,
the moving scenery declared,
applique, vitals, still, allowed. 

In craft of double artistry,
but without guile, for story told,
identity, as case reveals
plain creatures with their implements,
portmanteau of lived history.

So instruments of harvests sewn
the common threads, communal life,
a people moved, evacuees,
who set up camp where permit shows,
for carpetbaggers made their choice.

From Laramie, Dakota wars,
abuse was General policy;
so proud sub Sioux of the Black Hills
whose ancient culture near destroyed,
reduced to places now reserved.

Stephen Kingsnorth

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com

**

The One Thing I Cannot Accept
 
I must tell you
And you must know
What I felt
The day you returned
When everything changed
 
For three nights
I wrestled alone
Sleepless through the night
Preparing
For the grief
I feared
Would at last come for me
Carried by the wind
With a story
Letting me know
That you
Would not return
 
For three days
I worked quietly
Each day preparing
Your favorite foods
To share
In celebration
Of our reuniting
You
With me
By the fire
With all we have created
 
When I saw you
Enter the camp
My spirit soared
The joy
The relief
The renewal of hope
 
That disappeared
So suddenly
So completely
Even before I asked
"And where is my son?"
 
You were silent
For but a moment
The moment
Of the deepest terror
I ever felt
You embraced me
As I showered you
In tears
But I could not
Be comforted
 
And you know
Even today
I cannot be soothed
Even as I see you try
As you lovingly
Try to do all you can
For me
Through your own
Dark sadness
 
I see you
And your effort
While I fervently
Sew bead to bead to bead
Creating a home for my pain
To lock it somehow back into that moment
The instant where the spears
Punctured my soul
When I knew
Long before I understood
That my son
Would never become
A young man
Who would stand with us
And continue to sing his favourite songs
For us all
 
When I finish my beading
Then I will speak
Of that which I cannot accept
And then
Only then
I will seek
To live again
In the world not as it was
But as it has become
And it is now
With you
With my most beautiful daughters
And with him
Filling my memory
Burning always
Bright embers
In the hearth
Of my heart

Michael Willis

Michael Willis lives in Washington, DC, where he works as an attorney for American Indian tribal governments and indigenous peoples' organizations.  Michael's passion for writing emerged in early adulthood while traveling in the Andes and in Mexico and Central America.  A life-long lover of poetry and a practicing musician, Michael joined a writing and songwriting weekend workshop at Sourwood Forest in the mountains of Amherst, Virginia in 2025.  From there Michael took new satisfaction in sharing writing and works in progress in community.

**

​Sun’ka Wakan (The Horse)

I wanted to travel
to the big city
with you to see
that musical
about Cuba’s people
and music: a musical
about music, like
the Music Man, 
who himself was
traveling to other --
albeit tinier and
midwestern --
towns.

I wanted to fold
my best beaded clothes
neatly into yours and 
carry but one bag
between us, consol-
idating our baggage into
not his and hers but
ours, the story of
what was becoming
home between us.

I wanted that
comfort in a strange
land that comes from
nestling into the hands of 
one’s true beloved.  But we
had not yet lain down
by the river that runs
between us,
we had not yet slept
in each other’s trembling
and alert arms. 

Instead, I handed you the reins
that would steer you
between autonomy
and connection, 
independence and
interdependence.
I said “Have fun, Hon.”
But even the horse
didn’t want you
to go.

Greta Ehrig

Greta Ehrig earned an MFA in Creative Writing from American University, where she edited Folio literary journal and was a Lannan Fellow.  Her poetry and translations have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Her short plays have received staged readings at College Park Arts Exchange and Theater J in DC.  Her songwriting has been recognized by the Bernard-Ebb and Mid-Atlantic Song Contests.  She has performed on stages from the Baltimore Book Festival to the Boulder Museum of Art. She is a certified Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) Affiliate and teaches piano, songwriting, and other creative writing online and in person.

**

To Nellie Two Bear Gates Regarding Suitcase

Your gift that marks a journey's dawn
to which a heart and soul are drawn
reminds the bride that with her goes
the blood of many whose repose

became estate of stubborn will
surviving as the courage still
to carry with her precious lore
conveyed to yonder as its yore

by craft of patient, gentle hand
to venerate and understand
the bond possessed forevermore
that is the Spirit, is the core,

of Love transcending nature's earth
a bride is blessed to give rebirth.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.

Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**

The Gift
 
With each bead my gnarled and rough fingers nudge onto my needle, I think not of the suitcase itself, but your journey as a bride. My journey, too. With each stitch, with each piercing of the fabric, I give you myself, our ancestors, our sisters and brothers. Should any bead hold the grooves of my fingerprint, that is my gift, too.
 
With each bead, I give you protective images of our lives: our connected hearts from pipe bags, community-hugging warmth from buffalo blankets and robes, cleansing smoke from our smoldering kettles, and resilient movements from horses—those Beautiful Pure Innocents—all looking forward toward blue-sky happiness, reminding us of our fortitude in challenging times.
 
With each bead, I give you our past, present, and prophecy. Grasp the handles. Ride on eagle wings as you and your groom soar to the Great Spirit to bless your marriage.

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner, MFA, is the author of four books of ekphrastic poetry, including Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, forthcoming in 2025). Her work has appeared in more than seventy literary journals. She teaches Native American Genocides at the graduate level and lives in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarkrasner.com.
​
**

Unpacking the Trauma

My troubles are too many to pack in this bag.
Collected for me since before I was born 
and passed on as heirlooms from father to son.
 
What am I to do with all this sorrow, now that I have a son of my own?
Must the burden of generations weigh heavy on him too? 
Or can I find a way to loosen the knots, untangle the threads 
and present my inheritance as a gift to my beautiful boy, 
that his footsteps might be lighter, his mind freer?
 
This is my hope. My dream. My prayer.

Berni Rushton

Berni lives in Australia, on Sydney’s beautiful Northern Beaches. She works in the health sector and in her free time enjoys writing poetry, prose and short fiction. She has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, shortlisted for flash fiction and her first novel is in progress. Follow Berni on Instagram, @berni_rushton

**

Near Standing Rock

Nellie Two Bear Gates,
the "Gathering of Storm Clouds Woman",
was a beadwork artist
in a culture with no word for art,
but in all their days
walked in beauty's way.
This valise, a virtuoso artifact,
was meant to be a wedding gift
with pictographic scenes
that helped record the rites
that needed this remembering.
Gifts of horses from four corners
of the Plains have joined suspended
kettles brimming full of food,
and a lengthy line
of beaded pipebags and embellished
hides of the sacred buffalo,
beside the tribal tipi,
a center of the universe.
This was disappearing
on the long-knives Reservations
and in the distant Boarding School
that carried little Nellie off.
Did this valise, when opened,
contain the good Red Road of life
or the Black Road, banked
by the heaps of rotting buffalo?
And was this decorated luggage,
companion for so many travels,
large enough to carry broken dreams?

Royal Rhodes

Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired professor of global religions. He has been attracted to the story and writings of Nicholas Black Elk, the Lakota visionary and medicine man. Black Elk's description of the seven sacred rites of the Oglala Lakota remains an important description of his spiritual journey and that of his people.
​
**

I Hear Two Beading Artists Talk to Each Other
 
Nellie Two Bear Gates’ suitcase, decorated with scenes of family and culture was made for a niece’s journey into marriage.  As soon as I saw this beaded artwork, I had a vision of Nellie next to my mother, both of them seated comfortably in armchairs, stitching glass beads onto cases—the suitcase was Nellie’s choice and my mother’s was a miniature train case/purse. In my vision they laughed and talked together as each pushed strong steel, curved needles through the material that acted as the canvas for their creations. I watched my mother make her blue case. I brought her a Band-Aid when she picked her finger on the needle, watched with amazement when she had to string those tiny, tiny beads and now saw them both working. Each needle pulled along a string of glass beads--just enough for the line of colour to be laid in a particular space, tying off as needed, restringing often, layering color onto colour to make the designs very often for Nellie’s detailed message, relating bits of culture to her niece, revealing their culture’s basics to her so that the case would remind her of who she was and where she came from so that she would know how to proceed wherever she journeyed. 
 
In my vision, I heard Nellie Two Bears Gates speaking to my mother, asking about her work. “Why do you work only in shades of blue, like shadows on your small case?”

My mother laughed and replied, “You create to reveal a path for your niece’s long journey, a path based on remembering your culture. My blue ombre, is a work of shadows to remind me to keep my heart, my deep thoughts secret. This purse will go to my daughter eventually, to teach her to do the same. Always.”
 
When the vision ended I was filled with a new appreciation for stories told in beads. Both artists told stories for a future generation with their designs, detailed work stitching that occupied many late nights often in low light, each piece made with hundreds of tiny glass beads and a story to tell…or keep in shadows. Mom crafted hers in the 1950s, well after the time of Nellie but such workmanship, for telling or for stating there were things to say but would not be told, such tasks make connections that have no barriers in time or space. Cherished. ​ 

Joan Leotta

Author's note: I have the blue purse my mother made in my vision, shaped like a miniature train case. It coordinated with the navy velvet suit she wore when she shed the role of early 1950s Mom and wife, and secretary/bookkeeper in my Grandfather’s business, for the glamour of nightclubbing on a “date” with my Dad.

Joan Leotta of Fairfax, VA is a writer and a story performer. Her award winning writing work (poetry, essays, short fiction, and novls) is often inspird by art as are her performances. She gives a one woman show as Louisa May Alcott and performs folktales featuring food, family, and strong women.

Throwing Away the World

The whole world, all of us, are inside the bag, though you’d never guess from the way the traveler manhandles it. He swings the carry-on through the airport like a kid with a broken toy. He forgets it at the bar after downing two whiskeys, neat. A porter rushes over to the gate with the bag just as the traveler’s flight begins to board.

In the air, we panic. How did we let this happen? we whisper to each other. The word ignorance is spoken loud enough to be heard in the cabin, and apathy is louder, and riot is louder still, until a well-placed kick of the traveler’s calfskin shoe ends all discussion.

“I love your bag,” a flight attendant says to the traveler, crouching to take in the thousands of beads stitched to its surface, the magnificently beaded people frolicking across its cornflower blue background. “I’m a crafter myself, though I’ve never tried something that elaborate. It must have taken ages to make.”

“I’m bored of it,” the traveler says, in a lazy, drawn-out slur. He trains another kick at the belly of the bag. We leap from the sides, our cries like that of baby animals being punted from cliffs. “When do we get to the volcano?”

Volcano. We tremble. The bag shakes.  

The flight attendant checks her watch. “Forty minutes. Can I bring you anything?” 

“Champagne.”

When she returns with a glass, the traveler takes a prudish sip, then twists his mouth into a pucker.“Warm. Take it back.”

A drunk returning a drink.

A rich man bored by richness.

What a world, the flight attendant thinks.

When she next passes through the cabin, she finds that the traveler has fallen asleep. His big head is flopped onto his shoulder, his domed forehead wide and barren. A viscous waterfall of drool dribbles from his lower lip to the tip of his tie, where the liquid fans through the silk.

The plane descends towards the volcano. We can almost taste the sulfuric smoke rising from the lava fields. We can almost smell the bitter smolder of the bead people melting seconds before we do. 

We did this to ourselves, one of us says. Another repeats the words, and within a minute we are all saying it, in every language, the words in every pitch, every note, from every throat, out of every body. The flight attendant can’t pick out the individual words in even the languages she knows; the messy chorus of billions through the beaded fabric of that one-of-a-kind bag is as incoherent as the screeching of birds escaping a forest fire.

She kneels beside us. Her stockings rasp against the carpeted aisle. She cups her hand around her ear and leans in. From our guilt, our shame, our fear, she hears one word: help. 

With a glance at the still-sleeping traveler, the flight attendant carefully shifts the bag through the metal legs of the chair. She avoids brushing the square-tipped toe of the traveler’s wingtip, but only just.

She has us now. Her breath fogs the bronze clasp of the bag. She sees that, up close, it isn’t perfect. There are problems with proportion. There are a few who are enormous, while the rest are tiny and powerless. There are beads missing, threads loose. There is a lack of communication between the sides. 

Despite all that, she thinks it has potential. She brushes a fingertip against the whole world, then stows us in the overhead compartment right behind her sewing kit.

The doors have opened and the other passengers have disembarked by the time the traveler rouses himself with a phlegmy snore. He squeezes his eyes shut, then forces them open. 

“Where’s my bag?” he barks.

The flight attendant smiles. “Already at the gate,” she says, lying to the man who wanted to throw away the world.  

Joanna Theiss

Joanna Theiss (she/her) is a former lawyer living in Washington, DC. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Penn Review, Chautauqua, Peatsmoke Journal, Milk Candy Review, and Best Microfiction, among others. You can find links to her published works and her mosaic collages at www.joannatheiss.com. Bluesky: bsky.app/joannatheiss.com

**

A Letter to My Husband on the Occasion of My Death

My dearest Frank,

I will be with you soon. My old suitcase is packed. You will remember it when you see it. It is small and on the outside tells of our happy time. A time of love and betrothing. Inside I have laid what I will need for my visit and some gifts for you. 

Since you left I have continued my work. The Black Hills and their sacred spirits live with us but still remain beyond our protection. I hear from them often and pass their messages to the occupiers through our council yet they refuse to listen or to hear. They only talk of gold. Gold! As you well know, gold is the least valuable of the treasures of those hills. 

In preparation for my visit, I wrapped in tissue all I have learned during my time as earthly form.  I selected only the most delicate wisdom to take with me now I am departing this life. I have carefully arranged the layers of truths like precious butterfly wings, to keep them safe for this, my last journey.

I hate to leave my work unfinished but I am ready. I have lived by my true name in these troublesome times and never shirked from facing the storm clouds and pushing on through the rain in search of more peaceful lives beyond for my people. My time here will come again but for now I am needed with you and the ancestors. 

I will bring with me the wisdom from those who nurtured me and from those who came before me and those who came before them. I got it from the birds in the sky, from the buffalo on the plains, from the lichen on the rock. 

From the flowers that poke their heads above the scrub once the winter ice and early spring chill has given way to the sun again.

I learned from the leaves, from the soil, from the ashes of the cooking fires. I absorbed it from the bones and the hides of the horses, from the snorts of their breath in the autumn mist as they galloped free across the expanse of our shared lands. 

I caught the wisdom of the ancients in the grains of sand stirred up by the winds; and the rivers that ran through me and over me blessed me with their whispered secrets. 

The essence of this I will bring back to you in my suitcase. I have tried to leave much behind, hoping it will catch in the winds or fall in the rain, touching those I leave, as I was once touched by it. I hope it will find Frank Junior and Mary Ann and give them strength to carry them through. That it will help Mollie and little Josie cleave to each other with love and serenity and that Catherine, John and sickly Annie will hold their memories with them in their suitcases of love, as I have held mine. I have asked the spirits to keep the remembrance of our children’s younger years on the wings of the sand martin and the chickadee that we may all meet with love again on the prairie.  

I shall leave imminently.  Until I arrive with you, keep our memories close so we might share them in love and laughter with each other and with our ancestors. 

When you see the light shining with me, lighting the path ahead as I approach, please, my love, arrange for the gates to be opened for me to ease my passage. 

Your loving and dedicated wife,

Nellie Two Bears 

Caroline Mohan

Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She is currently enjoying ekphrastic writing.

**

Bead by Bead
 
I
Encased as designed, bead by bead
Taken from the roots of tradition
Imagined in the mind of father provider
And crafted by mother creator
Wrapped in protective shelter
To carry life as change
 
II
As our ancestors adapted to change
And told their stories, bead by bead
Moved across this land in unbound shelter
Took the wisdom of tradition
Trusted long faith in creator
What was before, became provider
 
III
Now this gift is provider
Containing outside change
Sustaining blessings by creator
Building new life, bead by bead
From our shared tradition
A protection, a shelter
 
IV
So, as life collects in shelter
Pay offerings to provider
As we have throughout tradition
Welcome all change
Thread each day, bead by bead
Until uniting with creator
 
V
Then becoming creator
No matter where the shelter
Even if unraveling, bead by bead
Stay one with provider
Learn from change
And transport as ancient tradition
 
VI
Convey forward to new tradition
Visions from inside creator
Where two combine in change
Discover shelter
Become provider
To each new life, bead by bead
 
VII
Though we arrive from tradition as our shelter
And transform from creator to provider
Pass on change to next life, bead by bead

Brendan Dawson

Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy.  He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and experiences as an expat.

**

Coming of Age
  
Twelve horses surround
my community, two by two. 
 
I exchange greetings with the elder 
and hear the welcome chant.
 
Returned from the hunt,
I smell the herbs 
in the hanging baskets
 
and anticipate the warmth
of the blankets;
 
soon I will be ensorcelled by 
the beads of the evening words
 
woven simply as elders relay
the month's events
to the soothing drumbeat.
 
Soon I will attain kinaaldé--
I will grind the corn and 
assume my place
of honour. But tonight, I will rest.

Carole Mertz

Carole Mertz enjoys the many aspects of ekphrastic poetry. She writes in Parma, Ohio, where she is enmeshed in the parallels between music performance and the creation of poetry. Her latest work is published in World Literation Today.

**

Dream Catcher
  
                                                 "... Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass,
                                                       And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
                                                       Darken with kindness.
                                                       They have come softly out of the willows...
                                                       Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break
                                                                     Into blossom."
                                                                     A Blessing, James Wright
 
 
Two triangles seamed at the horizon      are earth, air, fire and water
respectively, rearranged,  but two     in the symbol system of the Lakota Sioux...
 
In Houston, I'm surprised at work     by my daughter's friend, 
visiting as I sell folk art in a shop     where I didn't expect anyone to ask me
 
for a poem -- one of mine --    to be blessed on an altar at a Sun-
Dance Festival in Iowa.     That night, I thought I could feel the wild pulse of
 
the Indians, dancing (it's said I'm a little bit psychic);    the motion
of their spiritual passion as they called out     for a vision of their "founder,"
 
a buffalo woman, who comes down, white     like an empty page
or canvas     until life erupts in seven colours like a rainbow & the buffalo goes
 
from sunlit gold to thunder-line gray     in the cloud-clustered
music of poetry.     They say her truth is hidden, accessed when the day ends
 
in a challenge;      when red is as sacred as fire and blood,
and carmine clouds bloom at sunset.    It will be the hour of the buffalo, bison-
 
brown as the earth     where I plant seeds in a shade-tended
garden, a flower bed for multi-coloured blooms of zinnias.    & on the day I prune
 
weeds to release new life, I hear your voice    calling down to me
from heaven:     What's happened to us, Cloud Wife? Were we dreams that end
 
in fiction?
                  
                     2.
 
                         Now the buffalo is wearing light, her soul-
 
dress beaded like a bride's     her gift from the Wakan Tanka
(the Great Spirit of the Lakota.)    Four times she comes (North, South, East
 
and West) watchful as a mother;    in another form she is black
by night to show the colours of the world by moonlight   like a woman changing
 
dresses to colourize the Indians    dancing a Sun Dance
at the heart of nature, this moment    described by a computer comment:
 
                                                            Aware of his own serenity, the eyes
                                                            of a spectator absorbed the plush grass 
                                                            [sweet grass to the Lakota] the beautifully
                                                            blue sky, and the clear streams [where he
                                                            hears] every note of the chirping birds --
 
3.
 
& as the dancers came closer, ever closer     to the land legend
calls The Realm of The Deceased Relatives    their dance steps were a ritual of
 
light as twilight streamed across the sun    that sky I could see
from a childhood window;    where the clouds would one day hold Nellie Two
 
Bear's suitcase, unpacked    where I imagined an oasis, blue,
with a reindeer who lowered    the wife bowl of his antlers to drink water, clear
 
as crystal, the fruit of rainfall    in an unseen eternity. Bad dreams
could not find me there     when I was seven, close to heaven, where outside
 
was inside    where even clouds were horses; I called them in
from the moon's chalk field    and when my room was filled, I walked among
 
them like a gypsy, touching shadows, manes --  reciting names
as nature sang the seven songs of the Lakota
                                                                              and I believed that dreams
                                                                                   could unite earth and heaven.
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
Newendorp's bio is, in part, a dedication:  to Sarita Streng, her daughter's friend who went to the Indian Festival in Iowa; and in memory of the poet's grandmother, who taught at an Indian Reservation in New Mexico after her retirement from the Austin Public Schools. Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges, Laurie Newendorp worked in a folk art shop in Houston for many years.  She was fortunate in visiting Acoma, the Indian Reservation called "Sky City," where she met Laurencita Herrera, a Pueblo artist who created pottery storyteller dolls.  The Sun Dance is a ritual to renew life; as mentioned in the poem, it is unrelated to the Sundance Film Festival.
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