So my mom got me this amazing poetry book called: From Totems to Hip-Hop: A multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002, and I found this great poem that I think many will enjoy!

Grandmother Eliza

Nora Marks Dauenhauer

My grandmother Eliza

was the family surgeon.

Her scalpel made from a pocket knife

she kept in a couple of pinches of snoose.

She saved my life by puncturing

my festering neck twice with her knife.

She saved my brother's life twice

when his arm turned bad.

The second time she saved him

was when his shoulder turned bad.

She always made sure

she didn't cut an artery.

She would feel around for days

finding the right spot to cut.

When a doctor found out

she saved my brother's life

he warned her,

"You know you could go to jail for this?"

Her intern, my Auntie Anny, saved my life

when I cut a vessel on my toe.

While my blood was squirting out

she went out into the night

and cut and chewed the bark

of plants she knew.

She put the granules of chewed up bark

on my toe before the eyes of the folks

who came to console my mother

because I was bleeding to death.

Grandma's other intern, Auntie Jennie

saved our uncle's life when his son

shot him through the leg by accident.

A doctor warned her, too,

when he saw how she cured.

Her relative cured herself of diabetes.

Now, the doctors keep asking,

"How did you cure yourself?"