Beloved, Bird-Ash

By Jessica Mehta

In homage to Paula Gunn Allen’s “Sacagawea, Bird Woman,” I offer to you, in reverence to my Aniyunwiya ancestors, my own winged self.

Fire Bird, I’ve named me—

I am breath, mythology

shot to fruition. I am 

no critical race

theory, I am history. 

I’ve gone on half

a millennium, my footprints scar-

let, consumed like sacrament

by the pack. I am warrior-woman,

inversion, Amazon.[1] I bring

asegi aquadanto of my Aniyunwiya

People—I am

granddaughter of those whose bones & chambers

they could not break. I am the one blazing desire

trails, the one

speaking now, the one who witnesses,

the one you’ve waited for,

the one spilling Truths, the one who’s gone

to call, the one dript in all the gold

they could not take. I am the one who

nests my child within these kindle arms,

the one committed, the one

they tried to cage, the one they rained

sticks down upon, the one who cries & the one 

who flies, who shrieks and knows the skies.

I am the woman who knows more divergence

than forked frosty roads could muster, where

the carrion carries one, pressed to ground

to be snapped by my hungry mouth.

I am the one who comes,

the one who pilots past.

I am Woman Chief, Udantedi, Taliquo Didantvn, Bird-Ash. [2]

I am Red Woman and Beloved Woman, and I am here [3]

to burn as I please. And the deities, the pantheon

of gods is my Creator who stokes the flames

of my pyre, so with Bird-Ash in your eyes you cannot unsee me.

I take my whole Spirit self to ignite,

for you to lap my char from pale lips.

I am Ghigau, beautiful as the Red Rainbow, [4]

Birdashes. I am Water

and Fire woman. I am free.

I know all places, everything.

I sing with the whoop

of the searing soot in the black,

in the light, in the unfolding roses with golden

corollas that rise, like me, to azure.

[1] “inversion” and “Amazon” are two additional terms for Two-Spirit people according to Elledge.

[2] “Woman chief” and “Bird-Ash” are terms for Two-Spirits according to Elledge, while Qwo-Li Driskill cites “Udantedi” (“strange” or “strange-hearted) and “Taliquo Didantvn” (“two-hearted”) as common terms amongst Cherokees (Aniyunwiyas).

[3] “Red Woman” and “Beloved Woman” are used interchangeably according to Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller, as cited by Driskill.

[4] “Ghigau” is the Tsaligi word for Red/Beloved woman (see note 3). The “Red Rainbow” is referenced in a Cherokee love incantation, as cited by Driskill.

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Jessica Mehta is a Native (Cherokee) American award-winning poet, academic (current Ph.D. student in English), poetry editor, author, and artist. For her website. For more information at Poetry Foundation