| Catalog-Thomas, Barbara
LILACS WILTING ON NANCY’S BONNET 
Unlike any
squaw who births her young in the egg blue between
the last star and dawn’s
peeping, I incubate bits of skin
and bond, sacred fragments
fed me beak-to-bill by Mama’s
cousins. Unused to singing bone and skin
to flesh, I birth
pups: three paws on the left side,
one eye. The cousins
rock in patient laughter
(nourished three years in the writing,
my songs of Shawnee flesh and Gramma’s grit),
“She was Cherokee”
from Mythmaker
Lilacs Wilting on Nancy’s Bonnet is a Cherokee narrative, made complete by the inclusion of old photographs of high quality reconstruction and well-placed within the manuscript. Barbara Thomas was born in April, 1927, at Leavenworth, Washington, her wilderness years – no electricity, no plumbing – the stuff of poetry. She was a recipient of the Lanham Award in 1944. She came to poetry late, earning a Certificate in Advanced Poetry Writing from the University of Washington, and is a founding member of The Avalanche Poets. She and her husband Ralph were blessed with more than fifty-one years of marriage, fours children, and many grandchildren.
The cover art is “flower,” a lino-print from Catherine Michaelis’ A Cherokee Primer.
0-911287-45-0
Handmade / Handsewn $15.00
500 copies. Numbered & Signed
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