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Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

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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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“I navigated a couple of sharp curves and then saw another meaningless sign in Cyrillic, so I kept going. And then I was in the entrance of a tunnel. And then I was driving in the tunnel at fifty kilometers per hour and it was pitch-black all around. I was driving blind! I couldn’t see anything ahead or on either side of me. My stunned brain processed the fact that the first thing I had to do was to stop the bike, so I slowly braked while disengaging the gearbox. We passed the town of Katerini, where the road widened and had been improved with shoulders and guardrails along the waterside… I was just about to go to ninety kilometers per hour when we went around a curve and there, straight in front of us, was an enormous mountain with a snow cap. Charlie yelled, “Holy shit! Look at that!” I was awestruck. I knew it was Mt. Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece and the home of the gods… “Where else could the gods have lived?” I asked.”

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“The ferry left on time…. The splash of the waters and the rumble of the engine kept such a steady drumbeat that these sounds accentuated the silence around me. Maybe in Crete, Rhea, Mother Earth, would define my destiny but I insisted it wasn’t going to be what my parents were like. I watched the stars drift by until I dozed off.”

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“As I wound my way up the mountain, the road began to perform multiple switchbacks like a snake in motion. I had to carefully maneuver through the 180-degree switchbacks at walking speed with one leg dangling off the side of the bike for balance or support, as needed. The road became steeper as it clung to the mountainside like a creeper vine. It was no more that twelve feet wide… Higher and higher the road went, but I didn’t look over the edge until I came to a switchback where I had to stop the bike to walk it through the curve. When I stood with the bike between my legs, I saw that I was less than five feet from what had to be an eight hundred-foot drop-off. There were no guardrails.”

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“Beautiful women can be like dynamite,” (I said to Paul.)… “Now, now. There’s nothing wrong with dynamite if it’s treated right,” he said. It’s the men who go around with lighted matches that cause the trouble. By that, I mean they’ve got their dicks hanging out of their trousers all the time. You can see how that can be a  problem for the ladies?”

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“Usha told me, “We all must leave this earth one day. Some may leave today, some tomorrow, and some may leave after many years. There is nothing to regret when you see someone leaving. However, you should never regret the way you lived when you are about to leave. So, make sure we live our lives in a good way so that it is fruitful not only for us but for many others who are with us.”

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