O-si-yo lovelies!

Wow, I can’t believe a whole month has already flown by since the last email. It seems like only yesterday I was happily announcing the start of what promised to be my blissful summer of nothingness (other than writing, reading, and rambling). Now here we are on the long shadow side of summer. Yes, it’s still hot and yes, the days are still long, but it’s that time (anyone who’s ever worked in academia recognizes it) when everything starts to feel like it’s accelerating downhill toward fall.

Yes, the dog days of summer. When the novelty is over, the boredom has kicked in, the Fourth of July fireworks are done, and all that’s left is the heat.

And in Alabama, at least, more heat.

As of this writing, I’m currently out on a fresh round of submissions. In trad publishing lingo, that means my agent has sent my book out to a potential new round of publishers.

The weird thing every writer on sub knows about being on sub is that…you can’t really talk about being on sub. Suffice to say there are reasons which do make sense (mostly to agents and editors)but doesn’t make the process any less torturous for writers.

In the meantime, several of my poems have found good homes in the last few months. “Poem For Cade” will be featured in the new issue of The Waiting Room anthology from Nervous Ghost Press. “First-Woman Dress” was in the latest issue of The Portland Dirt. "Powwow Cycle,” “Today is a Strange Day,” and “Native Sisterhood” will all be in upcoming spring ‘27 issues of Feed the Holy.

With my agent’s permission, I have independently submitted two of my manuscripts, A River Diverted and my poetry collection Drums, Guitars, Blues & Ghosts. Fingers crossed that I may have news to share on these soon.

Unfortunately, my summer has turned out to be mostly in and out of hospitals. So I might as well dive in with some “good news and bad news.” I hesitated whether to go into it at all because I like to keep the newsletter lighthearted and focused on writing and stories. But I figure you wouldn’t be subscribing if you didn’t care about me, so…(takes deep breath).

I’ll start with the bad just because it’s better to start there and work up to the good. After months of trying to get to the bottom of my pelvic pain symptoms, I was finally referred to an oncologist after my regular gynecologist failed to get a sufficient biopsy sample. We did an MRI scan that revealed a mass in my uterus. The oncologist looked at the scans and said he believes it is endometrial cancer, and that it is at least stage 3 because the imaging also shows indications of swollen pelvic lymph nodes. The thing with uterine cancers is that once they have metastasized into the lymph nodes, they are automatically upgraded to stage 3, regardless of whether it has spread anywhere else. My oncologist stressed it is still very treatable and curable at this stage.

However, he wanted to do a second D and C to try again to get a tissue sample. He believed he would have better luck than my regular gynecologist did. We scheduled that second procedure for July 15th (yes, I am still recovering from it as I type this). Here’s the good news: Obviously, the biopsy results haven’t come back yet. But he was able to get the sample and when he called my husband to report on how the procedure went (I had no idea; I was out of it in the recovery room!) he said, “This looked a lot better than what I was expecting to find.” My husband said he spoke very encouragingly (which is not like Dr. Kirby at all! I call him “Mr. Doom and Gloom” due to his blunt honesty) so I know he didn’t deliver that news lightly.

It has given me renewed hope for an encouraging report when the biopsy comes back. I’ve definitely been FEELING much better (pain is practically gone) but I know that doesn’t mean a lot in and of itself. Cancer is a tricky beast. And he didn’t say that it isn’t cancer (not that he would, until the biopsy comes back) but it’s given me hope that we may be dealing with a much lower grade or less advanced stage than what he was expecting. Again, that preliminary diagnosis was just that--preliminary, and based only on the MRI imaging which “can” get it wrong sometimes. For example, degenerating fibroid tumors can look a lot like a malignant tumor on a scan (yes, I’ve been googling all this!).

It could mean, possibly, that it’s still early enough to eradicate it with surgery only (no chemo!) or—best case scenario—not even surgery needed.

Obviously, these next few weeks will be an anxious time and I could sure use your prayers or whatever your belief system is for embracing someone in positive, healing energy.

The great irony in this is that I am a Jingle dress dancer. I’ve been a Jingle Dress dancer for over thirty years. Jingle is a medicine dance passed down from the Chippewa which (like so many Native dances performed today) eventually spread to all nations. Its origin story is based on the story of a sick girl who was healed after her father dreamed of four women wearing dresses made of cones that would sound like rain, or ice breaking, when the women danced.

Girls Performing The Jingle Dress Dance,

For thirty years, I’ve danced Jingle as a prayer for others—but right now cannot dance it for myself since I can’t do any jumping around (it’s a pretty demanding dance physically, with lots of intricate footwork) but I feel like I need to try, even if it’s just shuffling my feet. I might have to revert to “Old Style” for awhile! In the story, the girl who was healed danced even with the pain in her side-it’s why many Jingle dress dancers still hold one hand over their hip when dancing.

Speaking of things that heal, last month when I went to Florence I had to pass through Decatur, my home town on the Tennessee River. I hadn’t stopped in a long time to check on the state of the Native burial ground at the boat harbor (I write of this burial ground in my novel In the Place Where Frank James is Buried, Just North of Here). I felt an urge to stop there, to walk to the water.

I was on my way to the monthly book club discussions I attend sometimes in Florence and was running late, so I debated with myself whether to stop. “You need to go to the water,” something kept saying, like the river was calling. I still argued. It seemed a silly urge. I just wanted to stick my hands in the water, like I did, once, when I was a child and terrified of the river. It was an irrational fear throughout my childhood (I’ve written about it often) until one day when I was close to the river’s edge and the water touched my skin. And I realized it felt just like the water in the bathtub, the same water that came out of the faucet, that it was just like the water from the hose. Just water…and yet I felt the power of it.

It was the day I got over being afraid.

So I stopped. I walked down to the bank, which is a lot more treacherous now than it used to be since they piled all the riprap there (balancing on a pile of rocks isn’t my forte’) but I pulled myself down to the bank and put my hands in, allowing the current to wash over them.

Think what you want. It probably sounds crazy. But that was the day my pelvic pain lessened, going from an inflamed 5 or 6 (how it felt then) to a very tolerable 1 or 2-in fact, most days I’m able to completely forget it’s there.

“Going to water” is a Cherokee tradition. Our people believed that going to “Long Man” in the morning light brought healing and good health.

I know that it does not replace science and medicine. But it’s like that extra little stone we place in a medicine pouch-there if you need it, and it never hurts to have backup.

What I’m Watching

No doubt, all of this has put me in a bit of a melancholic and contemplative mood, which may explain why I gravitated towards a re-watching of 2002’s Skins last night. The movie was based on the 1995 novel by Adrian C. Louis, a wonderful Paiute poet and novelist who spent many years of his life teaching on the Pine Ridge reservation.

I had the privilege of exchanging a few letters with Adrian back in the 90’s and 2000’s, when I had reached out to him after reading his collection Fire Water World.

Skins is a poignant story about two brothers on the Pine Ridge reservation, one a broken Vietnam vet, Moagie, who struggles with alcoholism, and his younger brother Rudy who becomes a tribal cop and vigilante. It’s not a complicated story. It’s just these two brothers and how they have navigated their relationship through their very different personalities and ways of coping with the trauma of their lives. It shows how two brothers can come from the very same blood, the same place, and yet become so very different. Directed by Chris Eyre, it’s a little film that brings together the very best of 90’s and early 2000’s Native talent, with the late Graham Green (God, how I still miss this man!) giving an Oscar-worthy performance as the dying Moagie.

Movies like this tear me up and turn me into a blubbering mess, and for that reason there are times when I just can’t deal with them. They hit too close to home. This one in particular—oh my gosh, but that one scene where (small spoiler alert) Rudy is driving away from Mt. Rushmore and sees the spirit of Moagie walking the road beside him (with the “Lakota Peyote Healing Song” playing on the soundtrack—nope, my heart just can’t.

That Ending…I Just Can’t!

But there are also times when I recognize that I need them, and why I need them. And for whatever reason, I needed this one last night.

I think maybe one almost has to be Native to fully understand, because being Native means you are part of an intricate, extended web of families and relations. You have your blood family, of course. But you also have your tribe, which is an entire extended family of people you know as intimately as your own blood relatives (sometimes more) and, beyond that, the entire, complicated web of family that you get to know through years of intertribal gathering, for some of us since we were little kids. It means the extensive web of people you love is immense, and their losses hit as deep as losing family members. I often hear families talk about how there is at least one empty chair every Christmas. For Native people, every powwow is a lot like that. You get together and you dance and you drum and you smile, but there is always an empty spot in the circle where someone is missing. And your heart aches forever for that empty space.

This is the feeling that Skins captures so beautifully. I guess what I’m trying to say is just that some stories do hurt. Some stories I have to avoid, for as long as I can. But it’s nice to know we can shake them out, visit them again, when we need to.

What’s New in the Reading Stack

I’m still working my way through Amy Jo Burns’s marvelous and mystical Wait For Me. I mentioned this one last email, so I won’t spend a lot of time repeating the plot summary here. But this is one where I’ve truly enjoyed the slow burn process of taking it a chapter each night. The only thing I will say is that sometimes it feels like I am reading more for the beauty of the words than because I’m actually invested in the characters (for some reason, they all feel very remote) but there’s something inherently intriguing in this story that keeps pulling me back into it and encouraging me to read on, despite whatever confused moments I have. I think this is one of those rare ones that, once I’m done, I want to start over and read again. It’s like trying to piece together a puzzle where you just know, once you find that missing piece, it’s going to come together so beautifully you will feel foolish for ever doubting.

It’s one of those books that just instantly makes me go, Yes, this is why I read. And this is why I write.

I was also excited the last time I was at Court Books to find this little gem, The Rose That Grew From Concrete. It’s a collection of poems written by Tupac Shakur before he was famous.

Despite his reputation as a thug rapper, Tupac was a very gentle and artistic soul who didn’t want his hardcore fans to know that he’d studied at Julliard, or once had aspirations to stage acting. But that buried side of Tupac’s artistry is what shines through in these beautiful pieces.

In the Introduction, the editor who was also Tupac’s friend and early manager Leila Steinberger spoke of partnering with Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur to conduct summer youth workshops, “Life Goes On.” These started out of a series of workshops given in Sparta, Georgia in which Tupac’s poems were used to inspire youth to write their own.

The only thing that has honestly excited me about going back to work this fall is that I’m hoping I might be able to use this book to conduct my own Tupac-inspired creative writing workshops for the students.

Latest Fun Thing I Did

Did you know that Billy Bob Thornton (yes, Sling Blade, Bad Santa, etc.-yep, that Billy Bob) is also a touring musician with his band, The Boxcutters? Well, they came to town on the 9th and we had pretty good seats. Now, can Billy Bob actually sing? Well, I’ll put it this way. He’s passable. But the music is a lot of fun and, who cares, it’s only rock ‘n’ roll, right?

Speaking of which, I just have to give a shout to my new “happy place” song…this new track from the Stones, “In the Stars.” I have this song continuously stuck on a loop in my head these days, no matter what I’m trying to get through. Seriously, does this SOUND like a bunch of octogenarians? And, look, if AI is here to stay and not going anywhere, might as well put it to good use. And I don’t know much better use for AI than making Mick Jagger young again!

Now if a little AI magic couldn’t do that for all of us!

The Song That’s Got Me Dancing This Month!

On that note, I will leave it here. Hopefully by the time I deliver next month’s newsletter, I’ll have good news to report from the other side of my biopsy and, who knows, maybe even news of a book contract!

For sure, though, a “cancer scare” has a funny way of putting things back into their proper perspective. You realize quickly what matters is being ALIVE.

And that it’s all that matters.

And writing for the joy it brings, not the rewards.

See you in August!