Natalie Diaz, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2012 Narrative Prize, is the author of the poetry collections When My Brother Was an Aztec and Postcolonial Love Poem. A Mojave and Pima tribe member, she grew up in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, she completed an MFA at Old Dominion University. Diaz lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs a language revitalization program with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language.

Photograph © John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.


2021 PULITZER
PRIZE WINNER

Three Poems

by Natalie Diaz

As a Consequence Of

my brother stealing all the lightbulbs,
my parents live without light, groping,
never reading, never saying You are lovely,

a broken Borges and a gouged Saint Lucia, hand in hand
shuffling from the kitchen linoleum to the living room rug.
The only pants my father wears are wobbling silhouettes.

My mother paints her face with distorted shadows.
One says rosaries to become a candle.
The other tries hard to be a Coleman fishing lantern.


People on couch
To continue reading please sign in.
Join for free
Already a reader? Sign In