Suzanne Rancourt

Suzanne Rancourt Poems

Suzanne Rancourt Biography

Suzanne Rancourt is a Native American poet and veteran of both the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army. She was born and raised in west central Maine and is an elder of the Abenaki Bear Clan. She has written a collection of poetry called Billboard in the Clouds, which won the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas First Book Award in 2001, and some of her other work also appears in The Journal of Military Experience Volume II. Her work has also been published in the literary journals Callaloo and The Cimarron Review, as well as many other anthologies.)

The Best Poem Of Suzanne Rancourt

Whose Mouth Do I Speak With

I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with golden chunks of pitch.
For his children
he provided this special sacrament
and we'd gather at this feet, around his legs,
bumping his lunchbox, and his empty thermos rattled inside.
Our skin would stick to Daddy's gluey clothing
and we'd smell like Mumma's Pine Sol.
We had no money for store bought gum
but that's all right.
The spruce gum
was so close to chewing amber
as though in our mouths we held the eyes of Coyote
and how many other children had fathers
that placed on their innocent, anxious tongue
the blood of tree?

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