SHARON DOUBIAGO

Lake Elsinore Creation Myth

We are to wet over the boat rim into the water.                

They hold their things in the air and water from inside them

arches through the sky to the lake of water. My sister and I

put our bottoms out. We can’t see our wet arching

The Indians call God Chinigchinich, so funny                        

we crack up laughing. To think the World began

with twin brothers, Mukat and TemayaWet  

who turns into a woman. That’s when the fighting begins

and something happens. Maybe Daddy’s fingers

when I squat out over Lake Elsinore

and he threatens again to drown me        

Wet was our verb. Mama I have to wet. We didn’t know

this water was the origin of the World.  

We didn’t know TemayaWet, but we knew Cain and Abel

            Once upon a time at the beginning of the world

            they were in a little white row boat, three children

            and the father, when something happened, everything 

            gone but the terror. Their father’s best friend Dee

            rowed the boat behind them with his two girls

            JoDee and JuDee. Maybe

            they almost capsized. Sex

is what happened, our nasty parts

holy, our mother lectured, if with your husband

glorious, our God-made parts

as we rowed

what our brother had to hold

we sisters had to wipe                                                  

            Through the years Lake Elsinore dried up

            all our wet disappeared     our bare bottoms out

            to the mud bottom

The Indians believed in the good and bad brothers too

born from this manmade hole

named for a great writer who wrote of a man

who killed his uncle for killing his father and marrying his mother

somewhere in the old country. If only

Mama cried

he could have solved the riddle

of his jealousy. Poor guy, his too big heart

What was their name for Lake Elsinore, Mama?

Something rotting, she said                   

            One day, the First People, who were the animals, mountains, trees and weather

            stopped by a pond to swim and rest.

            Among them was Red-legged Frog, Wahawut,

            a woman with big eyes and nice shoulders.

            When the other People jumped into the water, she sat still on the bank

            with her glossy long hair falling all the way over her hips.

            Wiyot couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was all swelled up.

            Wahawut noticed his condition

            and leaped into the water with her long, shapely legs.

            Her hair flew up and Wiyot saw

            her thin, boney frog back and hips

            Instantly his desire turned to disgust.

            So she grew angry, bringing death into the world.[i]

Suddenly at my mother’s breast I’m                                 

on my grandmother’s knee 

in a row boat with my brother, sister and father. 

Something happens.  Our mother 

takes the picture                                                        

                        *

[i]Sacred Sites, The Secret History of Southern California,  Susan Suntree, University of Nebraska Press, 2010,  p. 151-165.

Sharon Doubiago's latest poetry publications are TheVisit, a booklength poem, Wild Ocean Press, 2015,  I, Poet, Omerta Publications, lesgottesman.com, 2016,  and Love on The Streets, University of Pittsburgh, 2009.  Her memoir My Father's Love, Portrait of the Poet as a Girl, Volume 1, and Portrait of the Poet as a Woman, Volume 2, is out from Wild Ocean Press.