The Museum of Unnatural Histories

This extraordinary debut poetry collection by Dena'ina poet Annie Wenstrup delicately parses personal history in the space of an imagined museum. Outside the museum, Ggugguyni (the Dena'ina Raven) and The Museum Curator collect discarded French fries, earrings, and secrets-or as the curator explains, together they curate moments of cataclysm. Inside the museum, their collection is displayed in installations that depict the imagined Indigenous body. Into this "distance between the learning and the telling," Wenstrup inserts The Curator and her sukdu'a, her own interpretive text. At the heart of the sukdu'a is the desire to find a form that allows the speaker's story to be heard. Through love letters, received forms, and found text, the poems reclaim their right to interpret, reinvent, and even disregard artifacts of their own mythos. Meticulously refined and delicately crafted, they encourage the reader to "decide/who you must become." [Sample Poem] Ggugguyni in the Museum Parking Lot I watch her crow. Not as a crow crows but as herself. She's not here for the art. She's here for the minivans that devour diaper bags, car seats, children. She waits for the doors to retract and expel fruit, Goldfish, and fries. Free for the taking. She scavenges in lurching, crab-like steps. Like me, she won't appear human here. While her legs bring her from one delicious scrap to another, I work my own inventory. Once my parents named me Swift Raven- a real Indian Princess name. I flew unblinded, my hair in a blue-black braid down my back. Now, I'm ungainly, more harpy than girl. My mouth, a curve calling for carrion. I'm not here for the art. I'm here for the mirrors, here to unpair earrings and unclasp foil from gum. My beak ready to unbind carapace from quiver. Like Ggugguyni, I'm a scavenger lurching from one disaster to another. See how we curate cataclysms' aftermath. While we work, Ggugguyni tells me a story. Once, my grandfather said, a long time ago there was a raven. He opened a door and it was day. Then he drew his wing shut. What Ggugguyni didn't say, but what I heard: once he closed the door and it was night. Today I'm telling you this story instead: my mouth is a comma, my mouth is exclamation, my mouth is my body holding open the door. Witness my body create day. See how the light appraises my collection. See how the sunlight exposes how shadow bleached everything white.

ANNIE WENSTRUP held a Museum Sovereignty Fellowship with the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center (Alaska office) supported through a Journey to What Matters grant from The CIRI Foundation, and was an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow in 2022 and 2023. Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.

Sukdu'a . Ggugguyni in the Museum Parking Lot . Pretending to be a Woman, I Roam the Museum . Ggugguyni Transcribes the Archives . As Diviner . As Memory . As Land . As Vanitas . As Genesis . As Galatea . As Girl . The Blue Wing . Diorama A . 1997 JonBenét Ramsey Tap Dances . Diorama B . Princess Diana Stands on the Lawn While Brian Williams Reports her Death . Diorama C . Ghost Pixels . Excerpt: The Museum of Unnatural Histories Guide . Policies and Procedures . Becoming Blue . About the Curator . Café . The Parade at Remuda Ranch . Still Life: Dinner at Remuda Ranch . Landscape: Remuda Ranch . A Letter: . An Abbreviated Timeline: . Performance Art . Event Score for the Curator's Lunch Break . Intermission: Lunch Date . Event Score for the Curator's Lunch Break, continued . Sukdu'a II . Prologue . Chapter 1 . Event Score for the Curator's Lunch Break Continued Again . The Curator's Office . Diorama D . Lost and Found Inventory . Exhibit A: Un-collected Excerpt v Exhibit B: Un-filed Correspondence . Chapter 3 . Deleted Chapter: . Exhibit D: Non-accessioned Instructional Video v Diorama E . Exhibit D: Un-sent Memo . Chapter 4 . Retrospective: A Million Cataclysms Live inside My Body . Self-Portrait as Pareidolia . Self-Portrait as Jackson Pollock . Convergence . My Heart is a Rube Goldberg Machine . Self-Portrait as MRI . Excerpt: 25 Years of Tiny Power . Future Events . Heshkegh Ka'a . Exhibit 10: Polyphemus Moth . Portrait of the Rapture . Palimpsest . Iconography . Event Score for the Curator (Cont.) . Outside the Museum of Unnatural Histories