Weekly Read: “Letter from a Code Talker, 1945” by Sean Sam
BLR‘s Weekly Read series brings you one outstanding story, poem, or essay from our archive. This week’s read is “Letter from a Code Talker, 1945” by Sean Sam from Issue 47.
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The enemy skin seems a similar shade,
sometimes glowing in atolls bombed
or when it flaps and droops like a flag
of flayed skull in howitzer flashes
mouth gaped, slack as the jaw of a monitor
lizard smiling, the grammar grinding teeth,
my saliva a code, more sensual
than Enigma, all vibrating hyoids.
Speaking so well and existing so Native,
Uncle Sam has granted me a guard.
Brown skin is suspicion. It is tapetum lucidum
at twilight…
Why this poem?
“It’s such the joy of being an editor when a poem comes through your stack and the title gets you and then by the end of the first stanza you’re like ‘Okay I need to print this out. I need to sit back with this poem.’ This is definitely one of those pieces.”
– Saleem Hue Penny, BLR Assistant Poetry Editor
More from Sean
Sean Sam is a member of the Navajo Nation and a lecturer at Cornell University, where he won the George Harmon Coxe Fiction Prize. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, The Georgia Review, Salt Hill, Potomac Review, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. Sean has also taught at the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute program to assist young Navajo writers. He is currently an instructor at Cornell University and working on his first novel. Learn more about Sean on his website.
Sean participated in a BLR event where we went behind the scenes of our theme issue on Body Politic. His interview with assistant poetry editor Saleem Hue Penny gives insights into “Letter from a Code Talker, 1945” and touches on history, storytelling, and more.