Joy Harjo Poetry

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems
W. W. Norton, NY 2002

The Good Luck Cat, (children's book)
Harcourt Brace, San Diego 2000.

A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales
W. W. Norton, NY 2000

Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writing of North America
Edited by Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird W.W. Norton, NY 1997

The Woman Who Fell From the Sky
W.W. Norton, NY 1984

Fishing (miniature fine press)
Oxhead Press 1992.

In Mad Love and War
Wesleyan University Press 1990.

Secrets From the Center of the World Cover

Secrets From The Center Of The World (photographs by Stephen E. Strom) (Sun Tracks Books, No. 17)
University of Arizona Press, Tucson 1989

She Had Some Horses
Thunder's Mouth Press, Avalon Books, NY 1985

What Moon Drove Me to This?
I. Reed Press, NY 1980

The Last Song, (chapbook)
Puerto del Sol Press, Las Cruces, NY 1975

Below are selected poems from Joy's How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems.

Equinox

I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.

I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees
a mountain of sorrows, of songs.

I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
broken through the frozen earth.

Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead

and made songs of the blood, the marrow.

It's Raining in Honolulu

There is a small mist at the brow of the mountain,

Each leaf of flower, of taro, tree and bush shivers with ecstasy.

And the rain songs of all the flowering ones who have called for the rain

Can be found there, flourishing beneath the currents of singing.

Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirstay for more than a season.

We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, to drink the mystery.

We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.

This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.

The wetness saturates everything, including the perpetrators

Of the second overthrow.

We will plant songs where there were curses.

Forthcoming Writings

Writings Now Available
Bowery Women Poems from Bowery Books

Recommended Poetry and Other Literature

Poetry Links
Academy of American Poetry
poetryfoundation.org