Ari Tison

Ari is a Bribri (Indigenous Costa Rican) American and African descended poet and the author of forthcoming YA hybrid poetry & prose novel Saints of the Household (2023) and another YA (2024) with FSG/Macmillan. She is also forthcoming in various anthologies including Our Shadows Have Claws a Latine YA anthology (2022) with Algonquin Young Readers. Her poems and short works have been published in Yellow Medicine Review, The Under Review, Rock & Sling, and POETRY's first ever edition for children. She was the winner of the 2018 Vaunda Micheaux Nelson award for a BIPOC writer with Lerner Publishing. Source

The Storyteller Gets Her name

My dad used to call me Eagle Eyes. I was the one to find eagles, owls, blue jays

on a dark day. He called me so until my brother was born infant and grew to boy.

Having heard my name, as younger siblings often do,

he wanted to be called Eagle Eyes too. He studied the birds’ flight, kept his

eyes to the skies for hours, and soon he knew their long names

and could correct me. Except, at sixteen, I never liked to be corrected.

But my brother showed me the work, and I had to learn to give.

Give him all I could as my elders did for me.

So I tugged on my heart to let go, as I knew he had earned Eagle Eyes

more than I ever could. And what I found instead was new room, for a new name.

I am Siwa’köl, storyteller.

And my brother, he is Eagle Eyes.

I tell his tales and mine so someday when we join the elders,

my stories may be told and his birds can take to the sky.

But for now, I will share with you my story so that you can know who you are—

and maybe you are Siwa’köl too.

Published:

2021

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Agency

Childhood & Coming of Age

Identity