Originally posted 7/28/2013.

When He nearly broke us
on a knee and a treaty
our mystery belonging broke

Our knowledge of stone’s tongue broke

Our river dreaming broke

The river bed opened
and drained itself down
to bones

When He nearly broke us
on a promise and a prayer

we ended  — almost
Couldn’t speak to each other
After war came famine and
our children were taken
They returned much later looking more
like Him
Had no tongue to use with us
Who were we then
without them 

but when He cracked us

He did not finish it

We found glue among little stones
We found our old words there
We saw old life in new seams

When He cracked us

we saw his self capitalization at last
for what it was
and gently took it from his hands

When he cracked us
he cracked himself

He tried to wear our clothes
They fell from him

He tried to steal our names
We called them back to us

His children learned to see him
as unnaturally starved
despite leaning toward obese

They say they feel bad about when he broke us
Little breakers feeling sad in fancy hats
they don’t see as stolen property

They keep banging at us and calling it a tribute
Their hammers ring just as loud 
as when their fathers first cracked us
as when we first stood up to it
as when we first became unbreakable

and the singers
and the dancers
and the drums
our drums
drown their hammering 
in the renewed flood 
of our river dreaming

Originally posted 2/24/2012.
Original title, “The Names You Call Us.”

Whatever you decide about how we should look
is how we look to you.

Whatever you decide you can somewhat pronounce
is what we are supposed to call ourselves.

You pick a petal and call it a flower
as if calling out a part conjured the whole,

as if naming a peak
described the range — 

Pike’s Peak for the Rockies,
Mount Rushmore for the Black Hills.

What should I be called?
Should I let you buy me a collar

with “half-breed”
or “wanna-be” on a tag?

Should I shelve
everything I have lived through

so I can sit in your easy box and beam up at you
with your pink bow on my head?

Should I stop cursing you under my breath
when you aren’t listening?

Perhaps I should speak up knowing
none of it will matter much to you

as I seem to fit in this world
without really trying — no surprise,

I was taught how to try
from the day I was born.

In the dark I echo you,
calling myself lost, traitor, hypocrite,

but not for the same reasons you give.
I do it because I know I have had to give up

one half of all my contradictions
every time I have tried to fit in.

Call me the wrong name, call me
the wrong kind, call me wrong simply for being;

all of the names you call me in the dark,
or when my back is turned,

are names I have called myself.
You needn’t keep trying to kill me

with your words. I have already
done so much of the job

that I don’t know my real name,
what it means,

or how it might have kept me alive
in a different time.

Originally posted 11/30/2013.

I will again
call this place “ours”

when we can bury our dead our way
and be buried here that way 

when the old blood in the soil
stops weeping from loneliness

I will again
call this place “ours”

when we can plant trees here and feel safe
about our grandchildren living to see them

when those future forests again shrug
at our presence as matter of fact

I will again
call this place “ours”

when the names we give places
hold a music that pulls the land into shape

when we forget how to ghost dance
because it’s become unnecessary

when we don’t dance
for you

when we break the last camera
you’ve smuggled into our homes

when we stop you
from plucking

pointless feathers from thin air
and planting them in your hair

when we open up the shame vault and tell you
no your grandmother likely wasn’t

and if she was
it might have been by force

and ask you if it was by love
why you don’t know her name

I will again
call this place “ours”

when we stop being angry long enough
to pity you

and to laugh more than a little at you
when I realize

that I can call this place “ours”
any time I want

because after all this time
in spite of all that’s happened

it still is
it just is

Originally posted 1/19/2013.

Accessorize!
Hang a dreamcatcher
near your monitor.

Tell them your uncle
is an avowed shaman
at plumbing.

Hang no pictures of your parents;
stoically hint at a “plight”
when you mention them at all.

Squint, shade your eyes, and nod
to support the notion
that “the past is past.”

Smile wryly and often
when choking down
bile.

When faced with the questions
about surviving in the wild,
cryptically suggest “you know a few tricks.”

Pat their shoulders, firmly but gently,
when they cringe mightily before you
about rooting for the Redskins.

Always dress as a ghost might dress,
or how you think a ghost would dress
for becoming trapped between worlds.

Stifle your screams when you hear the words
“Cherokee grandmother, great-grandmother, oh,
somewhere back there somewhere there’s Cherokee…”

Turn down the offer
to join the gang
for drinks after work.

Get in the car and put your head down.
Be yourself for a minute
while they aren’t looking.

Originally posted 12/19/2005.

nothing has changed
except for the higher prices
it’s now two seventy-five
for a jack on the rocks
and a bag of chips
is now seventy five cents

I could end up drinking here all the time
the way I used to drink here all the time
thirty-odd years ago

some of my old barmates are still drinking here
dave parker
sue something different now but born boulanger
rat guertin

we all get to talking
rat hits the rest room before he takes off and
suddenly i’m helping dave
push rat’s car
out into the center of the parking lot
while it’s locked and running
and then rat’s cussing us out
and we’re laughing our saggy asses off

the car looks like it was made in 1980

I’m wanting a cigarette bad
it’s damn cold out here
it’s warmer once we’re back in the bar 

six drinks
in one hour
seems about right
once again