poem on unceded land

here is the block quilt pattern
where the river stitches New Hampshire to Vermont:

This is image is a group of boxes, a grid, two columns similar to a hopscotch board, with the middle row not separated by a vertical line. The words inside (from top to bottom): "tiny town / greenest hills // trucks / hatchbacks // a truck carrying a hatchback // white church / white faces // maple ice cream in a child's hand / stars and bars over a barn"

and they call me sweetie where I go for coffee
at the combination arts collective / café
and there’s live bait in the cooler beside the cold beer

This double column group of boxes says, "general store / prim brick library // stickered pickup / driver in a sleeveless shirt // facing the green, a porch sign / Guns Welcome Here"

from the ten cent bins at the vintage shop this town
will sell you picture-postcards of itself

This four-square box says, "covered bridge / unceded land // wood frame homes / colonizer's raid"

and I order the local specialty
and I take off my shoes in the grass

This four-square box says, "sport sandals / first blood // from this, of it // off it, clear it"

they never taught in history class
how to hold massacre
in the same hand as home
to match theft to places
ready to belong me right in

This final four-square box says, "university / atrocity // stately green / nation's shame"

before we said don’t tread on me
who treaded light over these mountains?

Abenaki Pennacook Pequawket

family farm ancestral land

and me, twice transplanted
with the centuries weighing
my soft-serve happy heart
raveling the myth of this land, this land
unpicking stitches
like pulling up the too-perfect grass

–

Chiara Di Lello is a writer and educator. She delights in public art, public libraries, and biking through NYC. For a city kid, she has a surprisingly strong interest in beekeeping. Find her poems in Rust + Moth, Crab Creek Review, Yes Poetry, and Best New Poets, among others.

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