Title: The First Eyes That Beheld the Grand Canyon
by Tesni Oteme
If you don't make a conscious plan, but look up and realize what you've done—is it still true? And, in the first place, was it as true as you think?
I think. If I don't want to be a teacher—but I have this thinking pattern from Middle America academics, into the factories. These places I have passed through. Many temps pass through, I'm not different. I stay, I go, I don't resolve. I reflect you from me. If you be nice to me, I be nice to you.
My hand buzzes, painful numbing from the center of my palm to the curling tips of my fingers. Up my forearm, ulna, over the elbow bruise, my shoulders curve, pulled towards writing, and the strain stretches to the base of my back, where all the weight of my organs, half my bones settle my pelvis. My lap supports my notebooks, ankles something like right angles to the carpet. Thumb to humerus stings.
But if I keep writing the pain gets to cold prickles, swelling, and disconnecting. Signals shoot through my neck, flinch, twitch, pay it no mind, left side but ignore it. The rush of blood behind the ear drum can be misheard as the ocean on the prairie. Every note rung at once, concentration picks out desire, fear, laughter.
What's in your blood? Who made it, how much do you make?
Do you need to go through every moment and breath? To capture one is struggle enough. To let go, but how far?
I think of Nevada, the bright cold of January, coyote tracks sniffed out by my brother's dog, the silence, not stillness. Between gates of rock, the wind curled through easily. Lonely highway, old pony express. Not true isolation, but near its worn edge. So many feet, so many steps, so many miles. I think I'll reread Marx and Vine Deloria.
Thank you, Dave.