the practical writer FIRST127 POETS & WRITERS^Luci Tapahonso’s graduate assistant,
so I got to learn plenty from her,”
Skeets says. It was Scenters-Zapico
who recommended books and told him
about poetry prizes and contests and
where to find more information online.
Suddenly the world was a little bigger
for Skeets, and he began to imaginine a
national platform for his work. “I knew
t hen t hat my goa l wa s a book ,” he say s.
Scenters-Zapico recalls Skeets
fondly from his undergraduate po-
etry workshops at UNM: “He showed
such promise as a young poet working
with diction, line breaks, and sound.
Jake was dealing with difficult subject
matter even then: the disposability of
Indigenous bodies and the violence of
towns that border the reservation. I
knew from the moment we met that
he had a commitment to craft that
went beyond most of his peers. Jake
is a poet of quiet observation, tenacity,
and compression—skills that have
been many years in the making.”
Skeets completed his degrees at
UNM in 2014, and the IAIA low-
residency program was a good fit for
him, financially and spiritually, since he
would be working with accomplished
Indigenous writers like Bitsui, Santee
Frazier, and Joan Naviyuk Kane. It also
accommodated his personal life; he had
recently met through social media the
man who would become his partner,
but in the beginning theirs was a long-
distance relationship—Yazzie lived
in Phoenix—that required plenty of
hours on the road.
A s if on c ue, Yazz ie a r r ive s to t a ke u s
to our next destination, the National
H ispa n ic Cu lt u r a l Center i n t he f a med
Barelas neighborhood south of down-
town. We drive along Central Avenue
and toward the university district,
just to relive our UNM days. I was a
graduate student in the English PhD
program there for one year, in 1997.In the Fields
with lines from D. A. Powell
We unyoke owl pellets from marrow
in desert meadow. His mouth a pigeon eye,
a torch, a womb turned flower. He, still a boy
dug from cactus skull, undresses into bark
beetles. He unlearns how to hold a fist
with my hand. Bursts into dandelion
seeds. We are all beautiful at least once.
Mud water puddles along enamel.
Eyeteeth blossom into osprey. Our bones
dampen like snowmelt under squirrel grass.
We could be boys together finally
as milk vetch, tumbleweed, and sticker bush.
We can be beautiful again beneath
the sumac, yarrow, and bitter water.
From Eyes Bottle Dark With a Mouthful of Flowers by Jake Skeets (Minneapolis: Milkweed
Editions, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Matthew Jake Skeets. Reprinted with permission
from Milkweed Editions. milkweed.org
POEM
The campus has not changed much, at
least from outward appearances, since
then. Every building must reflect that
Pueblo Revival architecture for which
the area is known. There is new con-
struction taking place, but nothing is
blocking the huge, unsightly Luis Ji-
ménez statue of the ballet folklórico
dancers that can be seen from the
avenue.
The Frontier Restaurant is still
holding strong after all these years,
and we reminisce about the many af-
fordable meals we had there on our
starving-student budgets. My favorite
was the green chile stew. Skeets swears
by the burger and fries.
T he r a i n st a r t s com i ng dow n ha rder
as soon as we reach the museum park-
ing lot, so we bolt to the entrance. For
the moment we are the only visitors.
A friend had informed me about the
chola exhibit—art representations by
Latinas and Indigenous women of the
urban chola culture that apparently
made its way onto the reservations as
well. Skeets recalls his own sister wear-
ing the characteristic attire and hairdo.
The exhibit is small, and since we
doubt we will be kicked out for talk-
ing, we have a seat on a bench in the
m idd le of t he mu seu m to cont i nue ou r
conversation.
Once Skeets and Yazzie agreed
to formalize their relationship, they
moved in together in Phoenix while
Yazzie was completing his undergradu-
ate degree in graphic design at Arizona
State University. When Skeets was not
in residence at IAIA in Santa Fe, he was
working the phone lines at ASU’s ad-
missions office in Phoenix. During this
time he arrived at another important
realization about his work.
“I focused on myself all this time
because that’s what I thought poetry
was—personal narrative,” he says. “But
at IAIA, I began to understand my
queerness as an expansive landscape
that could include my other interests,
like writing about Gallup.”
All this time he thought he was writ-
ing two distinct projects: one about
his queerness, one about life on the