Tag Archives: Native

The Cane

Once before I was old enough
to think things carefully through,
I owned a cane
topped with the ball-end
of a human femur.

I called it my sceptre
until one day I suddenly knew
it was likely
a bone stolen
from a brown body.

Carried it with me
still, for a little while after that,
until I grew sick with it
and abdicated
the black-humored throne
in shame.
It disappeared, somehow;
I don’t know where it went,
and I can’t call it back to me
and apologize
for that trivialization
without knowing its name.

If that name is lost forever,
let me offer these instead:
great grandfather, great grandmother, auntie, cousin;
teacher, mentor, healer;
caller up of other bones;
dancer under storms of tossed stones;
Horse-Afraid, Gothalay, Kamehameha;
confessor, absolver.

I can call you by my name,
my whole name
with all the lost syllables
I can only pronounce
in my dreams.

Come back
and this time
I will lean on you
as I walk.

 

 

 


Quirks

King Phillip had a quirk:
he didn’t think much of
the bloody English. Out of
their concern for him,
the bloody English cut off his head
and put it on a stick so they
could peer into it from below
and see what was what.

Sitting Bull had one too,
a quirk that made him unhappy
about being kept in a tent. He wanted
to get out and dance.
Deeply worried about such longings,
his captors shot him down
to save him from himself.

Geronimo, that old smush-faced killer,
fell off the horse drunk and died
of his own accord while living
far from home — but that
was his quirk, that alcohol;
no one else to blame for that.

I’m sorry that the only tongue I have
with which to speak of these things
is English; I find it hard to count that single word
of Spanish as a saving grace.
Call it my quirk: I walk around all day
with a little head of rage
because you probably wouldn’t get this
if instead I’d been honest
and spoken of Metacomet, Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake,
and Gothalay. Call it my quirk
that even now, I’m not certain that you will. 
Don’t kill me
for feeling a little angry about that.

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Blood Quantum

I’m trying to identify
where my Native blood’s located
this morning…maybe in
my belly that is on fire?
That is hungry with envy
for the bursting dam in Egypt?

Or perhaps it’s in my feet
that want to kick these unwanted
complimentary copies of
the New York Times
away?  They won’t be
that heavy, it’s not like all the news
is in there…Someone’s been tossing them
at my door for the last two weeks,
and I recognize some of those trees.

Maybe it’s in my eyes
that are seeing things anew?
Perhaps I should turn
from biology to quantum physics
and say that locality has failed,
that the blood spinning in me this morning
is changing momentum elsewhere, that the act
of observing has changed everything utterly
so that the indigenous
is everywhere,
and my Native blood
is everywhere as well.

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