The Westerns
always had us calling
the President 
“The Great White Father.”

All my dreams tonight
have been Westerns
but nobody called anybody
great, or white, or father.

My early evening Western
was of a snowglobe
being shaken close to my face.
Milky background, inside
brown bits like clods of earth
swirling, irregular sizes;
perhaps these were oil clots,
or the rotted organs of the dead,
but they were just out of focus 
and I was too afraid to squint
and make them clear.

My midnight Western:
nothing to see, my ears
filled with chanting: 
broken, broken, broken…
Did this mean the snowglobe
had broken,
or did the fact that this was
a different dream
mean the earlier one
had never happened?

The next dream, I think,
will be another Western.
Fear of it is keeping me awake.
I expect a great White father
waits there, shards of glass
in his hands, ready to embrace me,
to open me from groin to throat,
to fill a snowglobe with my grease and guts,
to ride with my pieces into the sunset;

Can’t imagine what could follow that one.
I’m certain it will make sense to someone.
All Westerns run together into one long story,
after all; I don’t expect I’ll be in the next chapter,
or that any of us will, in fact — not as we are,
not as we ever were. 

He was never our real father, you see. 

It occurs to me
in the crisis of the moment
that if I shave myself clean
and grow my hair long
and suck in my cheeks
and buy the right feathers
and bind some part of me
in leather and movieland’s
expectations of what the 
Indianness of me 
is supposed to look like
I still won’t be any closer
to exposing my true self
than I am tonight with this unruly 
stiff curled head and 
this gray bush upon my chin
as the nation
on fire as always with its own
blurred questions of identity
and never funny joke morals
tries on another uniform and
plans for another set of 
massacres and considers
what genocide
will work for good this time
so I begin to laugh 
certain that with my being
I embody the great mistake
of the Founders in that
when they were planning
to overspread and exterminate
and absorb 
they did not take into account
how stubbornly we would remain
outside of their definitions and
no matter how hard they tried
to change us
no matter how hard they tried
to snuff us
no matter how hard they tried
to mascot us and put us
to their own mythic use
in the end 
they were manifestly
destined to fail and thus
in days like these
a half-breed like me
with no apparent touch
of their stereotypes showing 
can still be a pure and straight up
middle finger from
all the Ancestors to
this mess of theirs of which
they’re somehow
so inexplicably proud

In Europe, one hundred years ago,
good folk used to speak of
“the demi-monde” — French for

the half world. 

Class of those unafflicted
by established social codes.

The first resort of starving artists.
Last resort of misfits and such.

Shining examples of how not to be.

The half-world,
where some felt 
fully present for the first time
in their damned lives.

A woman of the demi-monde
was known as a “demimondaine” —
by which the good folk meant

prostitute,
even if she was not —

by which was therefore meant,
fair game.

By which was meant, 
there is some use
for that half of the world.

In Paris
the good folk once called their worst thugs

“les Apaches.”

By which they meant,
this particular part of the demi-monde
is dangerous.

The French 
pronunciation softened
the hard edge of a tribal name
stolen for a savage badge,

by which was meant
face one and you will get
the storied treatment you’d get
if you faced our awful dreams of

Apaches.

Two dance instructors once prowled
the bars and cafes of the demi-monde
to bring back to the good folk
a dance called 
“La Danse Apache.”

A man, a woman, 
playing at pimp and whore,
man striking her down,
woman fighting back,
a tango of sorts ending 
with the woman carried limp
from the stage.  

By which was meant,
here is how “les Apaches”
are.

The dance became all the rage.

By which was meant,
here we honor all our dreams of savagery.

In the USA
during that same time,
professional sports teams
began to be named

Braves, Indians, Redskins.

By which was meant,
here are our mascots, 
here are our fighters,
here are our dangerous men.

They are still called that.

By which is still meant,
here is something we can use.

By which is meant,
we’ve already stolen
slaves, gold, cultures,
entire continents,
a whole half-world —

why stop there? 

There is a German word
from the world of opera
for a song lovers sing
as they die together,
tangled in passion:

“Liebestod.”

By which is meant,
there is nothing now
but this final desperate
clutching.

Turnabout is only fair.

Liebestod is beginning.

There is no savagery
in those syllables — or at least, none worse
than all that has come before —

by which is meant,

dance, Liebchen, dance.

very well, he said,
we will let you
demand your place.
it’s only fair to let you
ask.

very well, he said,
we’ll provide one too —
go and live on the gravel,
the wide banks of rounded stones
around the stream, the part
that floods with ice
in spring — rush of water
so cold your heart and lungs
may stop when it comes.

very well, he said,
you may also
name those places. call them
home or exile, it matters not
to us. if we need them, though,
expect them to be
renamed once taken
and don’t imagine the fishing
will remain in your hands
either.

very well, we said,
we shall do all those things,
even the heinous ones, even
the deadly ones; we will call
the gravel home, exile, death-
land, life-line, whatever is needed.
we will own our place regardless
of your threats and we will own
it all very well indeed

and when you come
to take what is ours
we will stand upon it
and hold it and even if you wipe us
with oil and fire, even if you
starve us or take the very water
itself from us, we will remain.
we will become
the rocks that sting your feet
and the names
you cannot forget, the names

that will come unbidden
to your children’s tongues
as they look at you cringing
before them, the clouds
rising from pyres
and scorched earth,
the names they will cry out to you
when they ask you 
what you said and did
to make this.

1.

At 5:45 AM
I took out the trash
and did not startle
when a neighbor spoke to me
while my back was turned

because I am not a target.

I watered the container garden
when we were done speaking
and then sat right down
on my own front wall
in the high humidity
and, in the name of
going back to bed
and getting more sleep,
took a few hits off half a joint
and wasn’t too worried
though it was full daylight

because I am not a target.

I could have been a target.
I could have been but almost
in spite of all my handsome
paternal ancestors,
I pass for White
and always have
and thus regardless
of my own thoughts
and obsessions and internal
maladjustments to the way
my frame doesn’t fit my picture,

I am not a target.

I can love and rage
and live out loud
because I am not a target.

I can walk a street
with my eyes set straight upon
the eyes of others

because I am not a target.  

I can watch every video
of targets, and target practice,
sit there staring,
crying out and raging up
and falling out,
then turn them off
or turn away

because I am not a target.

2.

No one
and everyone
knows what’s coming.

No one
and everyone
understands

what will not stand;
no one knows how it will
fall. None but the targets

understand
how that’s going to feel.
Everyone’s 

going to learn something —
at the very least, how
not to turn away;

at the very most,
how little it will be,
has ever been, about them.

3.

I went back inside
and was ready to sleep

until one of my handsome
paternal ancestors

rose into view,
right through the floor;

she hovered there,
her regalia soaked in blood;

she shook her head,
she would not look me in the eye;

as hard as I wanted to be before her,
I could not be hard. I instead fell

to the same floor she transcended
so easily, and saw then

how difficult it was going to be
if I wanted to claim anything

of what I thought myself
to be; and when I looked up

she was gone, and the blazing eye
of a bull bison hung in her place

for a second only
before leaving me alone

to choose.