September 21, 2023

Fugal

Santee Frazier

A shriek, dawn-like, birdless—an ordained
stratum—pulsing canticle of the numen.

The chant coarsely flung at the bosky ridges
of shattered clavicle—skull doused in lacquer.

Hear into the negative of bone the annals of a hut,
lamina of guttural gowk.
Fluted brinks of obsidian
cloaked dimly in canon—clamor, mist, shaping the glum

worship. The rite of splay—to utter a corpse to dazzle—
entombing the nebulous flesh in funerary hum, a syllabic urn.

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“‘Fugal’ distills ideas regarding the usage of human remains to establish epistemologies that relegate Indigenous peoples to primitive existences. This work is part of a series of sound poems that seek to disassemble and decouple language assigned to marginalized cultures.”
—Santee Frazier

Santee Frazier is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. He is the author of the titles Aurum (University of Arizona Press, 2019) and Dark Thirty (University of Arizona Press, 2009). He lives on Onondaga Nation Territory in New York State.

Aurum
(University of Arizona Press, 2019)

“Humanimal [I want to make a dark mirror out of writing]” by Bhanu Kapil
read more

“Gila” by Rigoberto González
read more

Thanks to Eunsong Kim, author of Gospel of Regicide (Noemi Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Kim’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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Poem-a-Day - "Fugal" by Santee Frazier

Fugal

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