On reading NDN Coping Mechanisms

I stepped back inside the door after taking about 100 steps this morning to check the weather. I have to get used to the idea that 96% humidity is probably close to rain. I can walk a little later today when I won’t get wet. I could feel the occasional drop of water soaking through my hair and wondered if there is a formula for how many times that water can hit my head before I feel cold and wet. The answer was too many to continue a walk.

NDN Coping Mechanisms: Noes from the Field

by Billy-Ray Belcourt

A poem is a room

into which I shove my

   autobiographical self.

In the dark I am a sign

pirouetting into its signifiers and

   signified.

I am trying to read some of the books that lay on side tables, on coffee tables, and are loosely stacked on shelves, some read, some half read, some wanting to be read.

I picked up Billy-Ray Belcourt’s "NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field" a couple of the days ago.
The first poem is dense.

Rebecca told me the book is a birthday gift from her friend, Tara Williamson, who picked it up and read it non-stop, and then passed it along!

I decided that reading that way would be a good method for me as well, so the next time my hands held the book, I went from page 4 to the finish.

I had wondered what NDN means when I looked at the title.

The author says “NDN is internet shorthand used by Indigenous peoples in North America to refer to ourselves. It is also sometimes an acronym meaning “Not Dead Native.”

I hope that is not a spoiler.

Arta