Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost: Poems

by Sage Ravenwood

Overview

Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Indigenous poet whose work deals with the lingering, resurgent trauma of familial violence and the machinations of colonialism. Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is a poet’s response to her place in the wider world, exploring grief, anger, tenderness, and defiance. Ravenwood sheds light on Indigenous issues such as MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) and the Native American boarding schools, but she also makes space to center the natural world and her reverence of it. The poems in this collection are unafraid to name rage and pain as driving emotions yet strive for understanding and a way forward to healing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954622234
Publisher:	Gallaudet University Press
Publication date:	10/18/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	506 KB

About the Author

Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate New York with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in The Temz Review, Contrary, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY, River Mouth Review, Native Skin Lit, Santa Clara Review, The Normal School, UCity Review, Punk Noir, Janus Literary, Jelly Bucket, Colorado Review, Pangyrus, PRISM International, 128 Lit, A Gathering of the Tribes, Ponder Review, and more. Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is her first poetry collection.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Note from the Author                              ix

Glossary of Cherokee Words                 xi



I: Resonance



Among the Missing                                 3

A Name Is a Haunting                             4

Say Love                                                 5

Harbinger                                                6

Wallpapered                                            8

I’m Not the Branch                                10

Weigh Down                                          12

Animalistic                                             13



II: Familial Treatise



Native Land                                            17

You Can’t Hear the Lizards Chewing     18

Blood Boils a Family Whole                    20

Truck Stop Preacher                               21

The Weight of Hair                                  22

Moving Fear of Staying                           24

Less Godlike                                           26

Conversations with My Mother               28



III: Twilight’s Lonely Cleave



Night Speak                                            33

Atsisonvnv                                              34

Wolf in My Bed                                       35

The Creeping Thief                                36

Wolf in Camouflage                                37

Playing God Without a Flashlight           39

Scraped from a Boning Knife                 40

Pulp                                                        41



IV: Soft Animal



They Will Come for You                         45

Calf Bawling Mightily                             47

Rewind Go Back                                   49

Billy Goat and the Two Wolves             51

When Hunger                                        53

Girl Bait                                                 54

How to Outlive a Rapist                        56



V: Season’s Betrayal



I Apologized to the Cucumber Vine      59

Autumn’s Bones                                   61

Death’s Calling Cards                          62

Fair Trade                                            63

Seasonal Affliction                               64

By Belonging                                       65

Golanv                                                 66

What the Lawnmower Coughed Up    67

Bookends                                            68



VI: Leave the Braid (Abnegations)



I Lost January                                     71

Palm Whispers                                   73

Red Dressing                                      74

Bury Me Guilty                                    75

Burned Theatre of a Tweakers Den    76

What Escapes a Throat                      77

Might We Be Magic                            78

Loose Threads                                   79



Acknowledgments                              80

What People are Saying About This

Ruth Awad

"Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is a reclamation of self. Exploring the pain of family, domestic violence, survival, neglect, and rescue, Sage Ravenwood’s poems radiate as only the truth can. Captivating and alive, this collection shines with Ravenwood’s tenderness, in itself a work of art."

Chris Campanioni

“Sage Ravenwood’s sublime debut is an ode to the animals within and among us, trauma and joy, the provisional cadences of the natural world, the rituals of passage, the body as recorder. With soft wonder and a documentarian focus, Ravenwood nourishes a space for the ordinary and unexpected to convene, epiphanies brought by the dazzling montage of image, sensation, and a consciousness tuned to the frequencies of the flesh and the ancestral. ‘All of life can’t put me / back together again Deaf ears / never hear you say Say love I can’t / I cut the words out of my throat,’ Ravenwood writes, and yet Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is unmistakably a collection that endeavors to map the words, and a voice, into a new soundscape brought by survival.”

Shipra Agarwal

“‘There’s no flesh between love and pain . . . Twin shadows  Never one without the other’—so begins Sage Ravenwood’s brilliant debut collection Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost. In each poem, we witness a girl, a woman, a self clawing at these twin shadows, desperate to extricate herself. Ravenwood asks, ‘Did you know, / Anger has a brother named Fear,’ giving us glimpses of what violence and abuse feel like, even as she warns us: ‘I own this darkness / The batteries in your flashlight are dead.’”

Editorial Reviews

"Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is a reclamation of self. Exploring the pain of family, domestic violence, survival, neglect, and rescue, Sage Ravenwood’s poems radiate as only the truth can. Captivating and alive, this collection shines with Ravenwood’s tenderness, in itself a work of art."

— Ruth Awad, author of "Set to Music a Wildfire"

“‘There’s no flesh between love and pain . . . Twin shadows  Never one without the other’—so begins Sage Ravenwood’s brilliant debut collection Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost. In each poem, we witness a girl, a woman, a self clawing at these twin shadows, desperate to extricate herself. Ravenwood asks, ‘Did you know, / Anger has a brother named Fear,’ giving us glimpses of what violence and abuse feel like, even as she warns us: ‘I own this darkness / The batteries in your flashlight are dead.’”

— Shipra Agarwal, writer and founder of Lityatra, a platform that supports the journeys of BIPOC authors

“Sage Ravenwood’s sublime debut is an ode to the animals within and among us, trauma and joy, the provisional cadences of the natural world, the rituals of passage, the body as recorder. With soft wonder and a documentarian focus, Ravenwood nourishes a space for the ordinary and unexpected to convene, epiphanies brought by the dazzling montage of image, sensation, and a consciousness tuned to the frequencies of the flesh and the ancestral. ‘All of life can’t put me / back together again Deaf ears / never hear you say Say love I can’t / I cut the words out of my throat,’ Ravenwood writes, and yet Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is unmistakably a collection that endeavors to map the words, and a voice, into a new soundscape brought by survival.”

— Chris Campanioni, author of "A and B and Also Nothing"

From the Publisher