18 Quotes by Natalie Diaz

In Mojave, our words for want and need are the same – because why would you want what you don’t need?

My brother. Our perpetual encore -he riddles my father with red silk scarves before sawing him in halfwith a steak knife. Now we have two fathers,one who weeps anytime he hears the word Presto!The other who drags his feet down the hall at night.Neither has the stomach for steak anymore.

What we hold grows weight.Becomes enough or burden.

Maybe death is a way to clean the self, of the body,to finally celebrate it. A celebration should leave a mess.

Poor Antigone. Bury the horses, instead, I tell her.What will we eat then? she weeps, not knowing weeping isn't what it used to be, not here.Poor, poor Antigone.

And even though you said today you felt better, and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear, to say, I don’t feel good, to ask you to tell me a story about the sweetgrass you planted – and tell it again or again – until I can smell its sweet smoke, leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.

The rain will eventually come, or not. Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds – the war never ended and somehow begins again.

Brodsky said, Darkness restores what light cannot repair.

To read a body is to break that body a little.