Christina Hauck
Christina Hauck is a Pushcart nominated poet and Yaddo fellow. Her poems have appeared in many small journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Coal City Review, Collateral, Flint Hills Review, and others. Her book manuscript, Dying to Reach You, was a finalist for the 2024 Barry Spacks Prize. Born and raised in Alameda County, California (Ohlone), Christina now lives on unceded land of the Kaw Indians in Lawrence, KS, with her wife, Margaret, and several smaller mammals. Christina’s current project, tentatively titled “Bad Deeds,” is a sequence of poems unpacking the legacies of white privilege/supremacy within her family history.
Playing Indian
i.
Martha and I hunch over,
walk slowly, place each
heel gently, snap
no twig, leave no trace,
sneak up on our prey—
Mrs. Smith’s cat.
ii.
We were surrounded
by ghosts. They passed
through us, the air
trembled with words
we couldn’t quite hear
or understand, something
they wanted to share
something we were
dying to know.
iii.
After lunch, we gather
acorns, shell & pound
them between two stones.
Pretend to cook. Actually
put the raw bitter meat
into our mouths.
iv.
Ohlone girls learned
from older women—
mothers, grandmothers,
aunts, big sisters—
when to harvest acorns,
how to dry and winnow,
then pound them to
flour and leech with
hot or cold water
sluicing bitterness out,
laughing and talking
in the shade of an oak.
v.
Our mothers stayed home,
talked on the phone,
drank coffee and smoked,
breathing great plumes
into the air. We would
spend our childhood trying
to decipher their meaning,
soon imitate them, dying
to be heard.
