one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen raw teeth-slashed Manzanita 14 to 19previously burned at the base 20 to 24 lay nearby 25 to 32 ribbed and ragged 33 to 40 a gang of teenage Coastal Redwoods barely out of shorts 41 to 45 hanging out 46 to 58 like you know how they like to do 59 to 64 cut clean at the ankle

65 to 68 tossed in a pile 69 to 75 but they are not wrestling or rough-housing 76 to 79 though this house is violently and brutally roughed 80 to 82 spewed wood chips like semen 83 to 95 ejected on the fire trail 96 to 104 a pyramid of chopped chips and leaves 105 to 109 made with such

precision but 110 certainly not permission

arbitrary

110 years old

born in 1911 after California’s first governor offers 25 cents for an ear five dollars for a scalp or head just six yearsafter the United States places Indigenous treaties into confidential files to be sealed for 50 years making the Amah Mutsun land stewards for millennia landless

arbor

brought forth on a mountain with folds of fog and rain corralled from the canopy growing amongst sorrel fernlichen and moss with purple sage in the air and cambium as thick as a dictionary words humans use to fashion fancy fortune and the funereal

arbiter

five elders felled like the juveniles decapitated besides bare their ringed history of drought and plenty which couldhave been counted to 2,000 before naturally toppling to hold centuries again of haunt

skinned ghosts now asking me to read their story and pick only the words that Wind tells me knowing I write on wood-pulped paper

Jane Putnam Perry, guest on unceded Lisjan Territory (Oakland, CA), auntie, member of 1000 Grandmothers, writes and creates art to recognize harms done and alive and pathways to mend in White Snake Diary (Atmosphere Press),McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Oaklandside,  Gloucester Times, Paper Dragon, Alluvian, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Ravens Perch, The Bluebird Word, Glacial Hills Review, The Mail/New Yorker, The Mantelpiece, Gyroscope Review, Pensive, and several academic publications including Outdoor Play (Teachers College Press). Jane’s“Echo Bridge” was a 2021 audio poetry finalist in The Missouri Review and “The Liminal Diary” was a 2023 Nonfiction finalist at Choeofpleirn Press. janepperry.com