“Something Purple” by Michelle Poirier Brown
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Something Purple” by Michelle Poirier Brown.
Something Purple
By Michelle Poirier Brown
By the first day of pow wow
I’d been on the land three days.
Time enough to find my way around the arbour.
Time enough to make a friend or two.
Time enough to settle into drum beats.
Time to become a face
in the stands.
Day two, I am offered tobacco.
Will I pray?
I take up the tobacco, wait for the Red Dress Special.
Pray for the families wrenched by sorrow.
Pray for the women whose fates
sicken.
Pray for healing.
Pray men join us.
Return to my seat, arms
filled with gifts.
It rains the last day,
the pow wow moves indoors.
Fancy-dance bustles hang between panes of arena glass,
eagle feather fans, beaded shields.
Mothers discipline long brown locks into braids,
lace brilliant breastplates into place,
clip barrettes, tie chokers, add earrings.
I buy a bag of saskatoon berries from a couple with a cooler,
lunch on berry laden fry bread,
search the stands for the people I know,
gift them with salmon I brought for saying
mwêstas. see you later.
A woman I met before the dancing
approaches me, stops my breath with shine and sparkle,
her regalia magnifying her, magnificent.
She offers to present me to the Chief.
His headdress humbles me,
stumbles my tongue.
He says I am welcome to return,
seals the invitation with a blanket,
purple and tan, an orange stripe,
black trim.
Copyright © Michelle Poirier Brown
Previously published in You Might Be Sorry You Read This by Michelle Poirier Brown (University of Alberta Press, 2022).
Michelle Poirier Brown is a Red River Métis writer and performer living on unceded syilx territory in Vernon, BC. In 2022, she published You Might Be Sorry You Read This (University of Alberta Press—Robert Kroetsch Award). Her work appears numerous literary magazines including several recent online issues of MBC Magazine, each with an audio recording of the work in both Dene and Cree. Please support this Indigenous publication by visiting the site.
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