FAILED ELEGY FOR DOBBY THE HOUSE-ELF
By Tacey M. Atsitty
When I walk by the mirror/ without really looking, I think I’m Rambo// not because he’s Navajo on his mother’s side/ but the bounce & slight curl/ of his hair, skin taut across his face/ his solemnity, forbearing sheets/ and sheets of rain still yet to cover us/ at the cold, gray beachfront, where magic is/ supposed to happen, instead its where Dobby dies/ when Dobby died, I meant to write/ an elegy for him, about his innocence// he wasn’t just spliced like Ron// it’s just how it’s got to be/ when things are going too well, and even/ though you rub sand grains between/ your toes, taste salt passing from wave/ and wind to tongue, your skin rises in bumps/ writing rows of affirmation: you’re really there/ holding a dear friend in your arms/ writing his death with every breath you take.
Tacey M. Atsitty is a recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Epoch, Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner and the anthology “When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry.” Her first book is “Rain Scald” (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). She is the director of the Navajo Film Festival, a member of the advisory council for Brigham Young University’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, a board member for the nonprofit Lightscatter Press and a founding member of the Intermountain All-Women Hoop Dance Competition at This Is the Place Heritage State Park. She is a Ph.D. student in the Creative Writing-Poetry program at Florida State University.