“Sweet Grass”, by Carrie House.
Oct. 13th, 2025 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
full_metal_oxFor National Indigenous People’s Day.
Content notes: this poem portrays the processing of a dead buffalo in specific anatomical detail; the slaughter is not shown.
Carrie House, "Sweet Grass"
One morning I, Navajo, wake up in Tiwa country
Friend from Taos Pueblo tells me they just killed a buffalo
Ten people are standing around, looking at each other
I watch the tractor's rear wheels come up and off the ground
The operator soon notices and lowers the buffalo
A man cuts the buffalo open
Everyone looks around at each other
Someone asks, "Who here can butcher?"
Someone says, "She can, she's a Navajo!"
I say, "Is this why he drove me up here?"
I ask for a wheelbarrow and a galvanized pail is placed down
I say, "This is for Minnie Mouse, where is a wheelbarrow or two?"
A wheelbarrow and several big buckets arrive
Two men open the cavity and I put my head and arms in
Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass
I close my eyes and am overwhelmed by the sensation of being
in a mother's womb
I carefully pull everything out and onto the wheelbarrow and buckets
Everything is huge; the heart, the kidneys, the book, the liver....
My pocket knife is the sharpest knife in the group
One evening I, Navajo, eat buffalo in Tiwa country
The ecstatic line Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass reminds me of this account by the late Lakota medicine man John Fire Lame Deer:
In the old days we used to eat the guts of the buffalo, making a contest of it, two fellows getting hold of a long piece of intestines from opposite ends, starting chewing toward the middle, seeing who can get there first; that’s eating. Those buffalo guts, full of half-fermented, half-digested grass and herbs, you didn’t need any pills and vitamins when you swallowed those.
Which, in turn, recalls this quote from C.S. Lewis:
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.
Except that the reality Lewis seeks to recover comes by way of a white English boy’s exotic Wild West fantasy—-here, House’s narrative, like Lame Deer’s, stakes claim to the substance and significance and meat of her and her Tiwa hosts’ rightful buffalo, and of the mastery of traditional skills brought to its preparation.
(Brought to my attention byradiantfracture: https://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/310500.html; check out the link for his insightful commentary.
House’s is a Two-Spirit identity that it’s not my place to label; I’m using the words “she” and “Navajo” in deference to her own choices here.)
Content notes: this poem portrays the processing of a dead buffalo in specific anatomical detail; the slaughter is not shown.
Carrie House, "Sweet Grass"
One morning I, Navajo, wake up in Tiwa country
Friend from Taos Pueblo tells me they just killed a buffalo
Ten people are standing around, looking at each other
I watch the tractor's rear wheels come up and off the ground
The operator soon notices and lowers the buffalo
A man cuts the buffalo open
Everyone looks around at each other
Someone asks, "Who here can butcher?"
Someone says, "She can, she's a Navajo!"
I say, "Is this why he drove me up here?"
I ask for a wheelbarrow and a galvanized pail is placed down
I say, "This is for Minnie Mouse, where is a wheelbarrow or two?"
A wheelbarrow and several big buckets arrive
Two men open the cavity and I put my head and arms in
Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass
I close my eyes and am overwhelmed by the sensation of being
in a mother's womb
I carefully pull everything out and onto the wheelbarrow and buckets
Everything is huge; the heart, the kidneys, the book, the liver....
My pocket knife is the sharpest knife in the group
One evening I, Navajo, eat buffalo in Tiwa country
The ecstatic line Steam from the inside smells of sweet grass reminds me of this account by the late Lakota medicine man John Fire Lame Deer:
In the old days we used to eat the guts of the buffalo, making a contest of it, two fellows getting hold of a long piece of intestines from opposite ends, starting chewing toward the middle, seeing who can get there first; that’s eating. Those buffalo guts, full of half-fermented, half-digested grass and herbs, you didn’t need any pills and vitamins when you swallowed those.
Which, in turn, recalls this quote from C.S. Lewis:
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.
Except that the reality Lewis seeks to recover comes by way of a white English boy’s exotic Wild West fantasy—-here, House’s narrative, like Lame Deer’s, stakes claim to the substance and significance and meat of her and her Tiwa hosts’ rightful buffalo, and of the mastery of traditional skills brought to its preparation.
(Brought to my attention by
radiantfracture: https://radiantfracture.dreamwidth.org/310500.html; check out the link for his insightful commentary.House’s is a Two-Spirit identity that it’s not my place to label; I’m using the words “she” and “Navajo” in deference to her own choices here.)
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Date: 2025-10-14 02:34 pm (UTC)