Elise Paschen
Summer 2023 | Poetry
Heritage of the Blood Wolf Moon, XI
She outlived him,
my mother dying
nine years after my father.
The tomb my mother
inhabited that first year, lying
on the suede beige couch,
sealed by the dark,
black-out curtains pulled tight,
blocking the changing trees
whose seasons my blue-eyed
father followed, shut out
the backdrop of lake
beyond the bluff. My father,
amateur limnologist, walked
the pebbled beach each
morning, tried to keep
his strip of sand safe
from erosion, building
breakwaters, constructing barrier
boulders. During my childhood
summers of their separation,
we helped him dig holes
in sand, to bury deep
the tide of alewives. The stench
of those fish, their silver bodies,
shriveled in the sun. Our dog
loved to roll among the carcasses.
We splashed my playful
father in the azure-cold
lake, the infinite lake
masquerading as ocean.
Elise Paschen is the author of The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Prize, and Houses: Coasts. Her poems have appeared in The Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Poetry, among other anthologies and magazines. She has edited and co-edited many anthologies, including, most recently The Eloquent Poem. Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Elise recommends Louise Erdrich, The Sentence; Nell Stevens, Briefly, A Delicious Life; and Joy Harjo, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light.