Eel

I don’t understand this kindergarten

assignment: “Draw Your Clan.”

The three letters live in abstraction.

A friend suggests mine looks like his, minus

legs, and that day I believe my clan is

a species of amputee Snipes, birds

forced to fly the skies forever, and I

wonder if we are meant to symbolize

endurance or something beyond

my five-year-old comprehension.

2

My mother explains we are not legless

birds and if she had a more worldly

vocabulary she would have suggested

we were ambiguous, not quite a fish,

more than a water snake, but she says

we are among the few. The last Tuscarora Eel

died out a generation ago, so we are left

Onondaga Eels among the Tuscarora,

voiceless as well as legless.

3

I find an encyclopedia photo,

see jagged rows of razor teeth

in a mouth perpetually grinning

and when I show it to her, she says

clans are a system to keep track

of families, so we don’t inadvertently

marry our relatives, and that we have no

more affinity with eels than anyone else

on the reservation has with their animals.

4

“If I threw you in the dike,” she says

“you’d drown as fast as anyone else,” done

with this lesson. I remember older cousins,

swimming between my legs, and suddenly I am rising,

their hands grabbing my knees as my balls collide

with the backs of their necks, and they break

the surface, toss me into deeper water, probably

watching to make sure I surface, after they’ve had

some amusement at my struggle.

5

In wet darkness, I imagine opening

my eyes and mouth, taking water in,

filling my lungs, discovering gills

like Aquaman or Namor, the Sub-mariner.

Knowing I had better odds of dying, face down,

no voice to call out for help, I am

never quite brave enough to try it, not daring

enough, even, to open my eyes when my face breaks

the stillness of river water contained.

6

But I flip on my back, ears below the surface, listen

to mysteries, breathe shallowly at that level, and float,

wondering what it would be like to glide the depths

on fins, knowing if I were there, I would desire

legs and lungs, and then I fill my chest to capacity,

and dive, loving and begrudging the ache I find there,

the throbbing of my chest begging for release,

and I swim back up, eyes still closed, wondering how

long it will take to find the surface again.