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Quote by Joy Harjo

“Moonlight I know when the sun is in China because the night shining other-light crawls into my bed. She is moon. Her eyes slit and yellow she is the last one out of a dingy bar in Albuquerque— Fourth Street, or from similar avenues in Hong Kong. Where someone else has also awakened, the night thrown back and asked, 'where is the moon, my lover'? And from here I always answer in my dreaming, 'the last time I saw her was in the arms of another sky'.”

Quote by Joy Harjo

Work

She Had Some Horses

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Author

Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is an American Indian poet born on May 9, 1951. Her work blends poetry, music, and visual art, exploring Native American culture, identity, and the female experience. Harjo is known for her unique voice and profound emotional expression, and her poetry has won numerous literary awards. more

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“What I Should Have Said There's nothing that says you can't call. I spend the weekdays teaching and moving my children from breakfast to bedtime. What else, I feel like a traitor telling someone else things I can't tell to you. What is it that keeps us together? Fingertip to fingertip, from Santa Fe to Albuquerque? I feel bloated with what I should say and what I don't. We drift and drift, with few storms of heat inbetween the motions. I love you. The words confuse me. Maybe they have become a cushion keeping us in azure sky and in flight not there, not here. We are horses knocked out with tranquilizers sucked into a deep deep sleeping for the comfort and anesthesia death. We are caught between clouds and wet earth and there is no motion either way no life to speak of.”

“Cat stands at the fridge, Cries loudly for milk. But I've filled her bowl. Wild cat, I say, Sister, Look, you have milk. I clink my fingernail Against the rim. Milk. With down and liver, A word I know she hears. Her sad miaow. She runs To me. She dips In her whiskers but Doesn't drink. As sometimes I want the light on When it is on. Or when I saw the woman walking toward my house and I thought there's Frances. Then looked in the car mirror To be sure. She stalks The room. She wants. Milk Beyond milk. World beyond This one, she cries.”

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“He said I must pay special attention in cars. He wasn’t, he assured me, saying that I’d be in an accident but that for two weeks some particular caution was in order, &, he said, all I really needed to do was throw the white light of Alma around any car I entered & then I’d be fine. & when I asked about Alma, he said, Oh, come on, you know Alma well. You two were together first in Egypt & then at Stonehenge, & I nodded though I’ve never been— in this life at least—to Stonehenge; then I said, Shouldn’t I always throw the white light of Alma around a car? & when he said, Well, it wouldn’t hurt, I said, What about around planes, houses? What if I throw the white light of Alma around anyone who might need protection from the reckless speed of driving or the reckless swerve & skid of the world? & the psychic opened his hands & shrugged up his shoulders. So despite your doubt or mine as to why I’d gone there, to a psychic, in—I kid you not—a town of psychics—in the first place, right now, as you read this, let me throw the white light of Alma around you & everyone you pass close to today, beloved or stranger, the grocer, the bus driver, the boy on his longboard, the lady you stand silent beside in the elevator, & also I am throwing it around anyone they care about anywhere in the spin of the world, because, we can agree that these days, everywhere, particular caution is in order &, even if unverifiable, the light of my dear sister Alma, couldn’t hurt.”