"The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket traverses the Southwest landscape, exploring intricate relationships between Native peoples and nature, land, pop culture, 20th century music and representations, and tradition. Oscillating between 20th century Indigenous musical influences (including the repercussions of ethnomusicology and armchair anthropology) and the present/past/future, the collection re-writes and re-rights what it means to be Indigenous, specifically a young (formerly emo) Diné person, in the 21st century. "Time is read backwards in the rock-body"... time is reframed and recontextualized according to the original peoples of these lands and how they view their own histories, family histories, personal histories, etc"--

The National Poetry Series, 2023