Preparations for my neighbor's wedding.
Grinding corn for the wedding. The poem below was inspired by watching these very women grind corn on this particular day.
SLEEP BABY
(written by Anne Egger, MFA creative writing, UNM, following her trip to CV in 2002)
Corn grind pole thrust
woman is her body,
three mothers, arms, waist
thrown into a rhythm
Pound triplets
pound triplets
make echo
through valley
One sets pole aside
ties her panu's ends
they think, "must keep
baby good and tight"
Pound triplets
Pound triplets
baby sleeps,
mama works
Basket sift shake flour
flung in yellow heaps,
whole kernels back to
the beat picks up again
When my best-friend Anne visited, I organized my villagers to throw her a small dance and drumming party in the traditional call and response style.Without real drums, we improvised with anything laying around.
Anne and I threw a small party for the drummer and dancers afterwards, which involved juice and popcorn.
