M.L. Smoker belongs to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in north-eastern Montana. Her family’s home is on Tabexa Wakpa (Frog Creek). She holds an MFA from the University of Montana in Missoula, where she was the recipient of the Richard Hugo Fellowship. She is also a graduate of Pepperdine University, […]
Is it poetry to say that each time I cross over a certain bridge on the Yellowstone, I remember the way green vinyl felt on the back of my legs instead of how my own mother’s feet, stiff from death, felt in my hands? I did not know that a poet could […]
[begin excited, anticipatory voice] surely this is the route, the very route [lose excited, anticipatory voice] …we never once moved across. In how many ways can we make this argument? Asia is the blanket flashed across eyelids the final scene unwinding, crumbling against black edges. [movie set make-up trailer, artist applies heavy bronzer with care] […]
March 20, 2003 The time is important here – not because this has been a long winter or because it is my first at home since childhood – but because there is so much else to be unsure of. We are on the brink of an invasion. At a time like this how is it […]
The man who owned the only saddlery shop in town refused, until the day he died, to sell back my grandfather’s grass dance regalia. When the shop owner was still alive, the wiry hairs on his knuckles stood on end each time a new wind blew down Main Street. Later he grew to call this […]
In memory of Eric Levi BigLeggins 1 After child after child after child, no one believes in the cacophony of sirens anymore. If only we could break back these bones and form a new ceremony from each of our losses. O’ mend our teeth from another dark stretch of road, our rugged knuckles from another […]
M.L. Smoker, author of Another Attempt at Rescue (Hanging Loose Press, 2005), talks about how she became a poet.
M.L. Smoker, author of Another Attempt at Rescue (Hanging Loose Press, 2005), talks about her poetic influences.