Magic Words

In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen–
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.


-- Anonymous Inuit; translated by Edward Field

Passive Voice

I use a trick to teach students 
how to avoid passive voice. 

Circle the verbs. 
Imagine inserting “by zombies” 
after each one. 

Have the words been claimed 
by the flesh-hungry undead? 
If so, passive voice. 

I wonder if these 
sixth graders will recollect, 
on summer vacation, 
as they stretch their legs 
on the way home 
from Yellowstone or Yosemite 
and the byway’s historical marker 
beckons them to the site of an Indian village— 

Where trouble was brewing. 
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter. 
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred. 
Where most were women and children. 

Riveted bramble of passive verbs 
etched in wood— 
stripped hands 
breaking up from the dry ground 
to pinch the meat 
of their young red tongues. 


 --Laura Da’, poet and public school teacher, member of the Eastern Band of the Shawnee, from Tributaries, 2015