line of a nose,
no lips,
no behind, hey
white me
and i’m wearing
white history
but there’s no future
in those clothes
so i take them off and
wake up
dancing.
my dream about the cows
and then i see the cattle of my own town,
rustled already,
prodded by pale cowboys with a foreign smell
into dark pens built to hold them forever,
and then i see a few of them
rib thin and weeping low over
sparse fields and milkless lives but
standing somehow standing,
and then i see how all despair is
thin and weak and personal and
then i see it’s only
the dream about the cows.
my dream about time
a woman unlike myself is running
down the long hall of a lifeless house
with too many windows which open on
a world she has no language for,
running and running until she reaches
at last the one and only door
which she pulls open to find each wall
is faced with clocks and as she watches
all of the clocks strike
NO
my dream about falling
a fruitful woman
such as myself
is
falling
notices
she is
an apple
thought
that the blossom
was always
thought
that the tree
was forever
fruitful
a woman
such as
myself.
the fact is the falling.
the dream is the tree.
my dream about the second coming
mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where
no man touches.
not when the snow in her hair melts away.
not when the stranger she used to wait for
appears dressed in lights at her
kitchen table.
she is an old woman and
doesn’t believe it.
when Something drops onto her toes one night
she calls it a fox
but she feeds it.
my dream about God
He is wearing my grandfather’s hat.
He is taller than my last uncle.
when He sits to listen
He leans forward tilting the chair
where His chin cups in my father’s hand.
it is swollen and hard from creation.
His fingers drum on His knee
dads stern tattoo.
and who do i dream i am
accepting His attentions?
i am the good daughter who stays at home
singing and sewing.
when i whisper He strains to hear me and
He does whatever i say.
my dream about the poet
a man.
i think it is a man.
sits down with wood.
i think he’s holding wood.
he carves.
he is making a world
he says
as his fingers cut citizens
trees and things
which he perceives to be a world
but someone says that is
only a poem.
he laughs.
i think he is laughing.
morning mirror
my mother her sad eyes worn as bark
faces me in the mirror. my mother
whose only sin was dying, whose only
enemy was time, frowns in the glass.
once again she has surprised me
in an echo of her life but
my mother refuses to be reflected;
warns away the glint of likeness,
the woman is loosened in the mirror and
thelma lucille begins her day.
or next
the death of crazy horse
9/5/1877
age 35
in the hills where the hoop
of the world
bends to the four directions
WakanTanka has shown me
the path men walk is shadow.
i was a boy when i saw it,
that long hairs and gray beards
and myself
must enter the dream to be real.
so i dreamed and i dreamed
and i endured.
i am the final war chief.
never defeated in battle.
Lakotah, remember my name.
now on this wall my bones
and my heart
are warm in the hands of my father.
WakanTanka has shown me the shadows
will break
near the creek called Wounded Knee.
remember my name, Lakotah.
i am the final war chief.
father, my heart,
never defeated in battle,
father, my bones,
never defeated in battle,
leave them at Wounded Knee
and remember our name. Lakotah.
i am released from shadow.
my horse dreams and dances under me
as i enter the actual world.
crazy horse names his daughter
sing the names of the women sing
the power full names of the women sing
White Buffalo Woman who brought the pipe
Black Buffalo Woman and Black Shawl
sing the names of the women sing
the power of name in the women sing
the name i have saved for my daughter sing
her name to the ties and baskets and
the red tailed hawk will take her name and
sing her power to WakanTanka sing
the name of my daughter sing she is
They Are Afraid Of Her.
crazy horse instructs the young men but in their grief they forget
cousins if i be betrayed
paint my body red and
plunge it in fresh water.
i will be restored. if not
my bones will turn to stone
my joints to flint and my spirit
will watch and wait.
it is more than one hundred years.
grandmother earth rolls her shoulders
in despair. her valleys are flooded
fresh with water and blood.
surely the heart of crazy horse must rise
and rebone itself.
to me my tribes.
to me my horses.
to me my medicine.
the message of crazy horse
i would sit in the center of the world,
the Black Hills hooped around me and
dream of my dancing horse. my wife
was Black Shawl who gave me the daughter
i called They Are Afraid Of Her.
i was afraid of nothing
except Black Buffalo Woman.
my love for her i wore
instead of feathers. i did not dance
i dreamed. i am dreaming now
across the worlds. my medicine is strong.
my medicine is strong in the Black basket
of these fingers. i come through this
Black Buffalo woman. hear me;
the hoop of the world is breaking.
fire burns in the four directions.
the dreamers are running away from the hills.
i have seen it. i am crazy horse.
the death of thelma sayles
2/13/59
age 44
i leave no tracks so my live loves
can’t follow. at the river
most turn back, their souls shivering,
but my little girl stands alone on the bank
and watches. i pull my heart out of my pocket
and throw it. i smile as she catches all
she’ll ever catch and heads for home
and her children. mothering
has made it strong, i whisper in her ear
along the leaves.
lives
to lu in answer to her question
you have been a fisherman,
simple and poor. you
struggled all your days and
even at the end you fought
and did not win. your son
was swimming. fearing
for his life you
rushed toward him. and drowned.
once a doctor, bitter,
born in a cold climate,
you turned your scalpel
on the world and cut your way
to the hangman.
humans who speak of royal lives
amuse Them. you have heard of course
of the splendid court of sheba;
you were then. you were not there.
the message of thelma sayles
baby, my only husband turned away.
for twenty years my door was open.
nobody ever came.
the first fit broke my bed.
i woke from ecstasy to ask
what blood is this? am i the bride of Christ?
my bitten tongue was swollen for three days.
i thrashed and rolled from fit to death.
you are my only daughter.
when you lie awake in the evenings
counting your birthdays
turn the blood that clots your tongue
into poems. poems.
the death of joanne c.
11/30/82
aged 21
i am the battleground that
shrieks like a girl.
to myself i call myself
gettysburg. laughing,
twisting the i.v.,
laughing or crying, i can’t tell
which anymore,
i host the furious battling of
a suicidal body and
a murderous cure.
enter my mother
wearing a peaked hat.
her cape billows,
her broom sweeps the nurses away,
she is flying, the witch of the ward, my mother
pulls me up by the scruff of the spine
incanting Live Live Live!
leukemia as white rabbit
running always running murmuring
she will be furious she will be
furious, following a great
cabbage of a watch that tells only
terminal time, down deep into a
rabbit hole of diagnosticians shouting
off with her hair off with her skin and
i am i am i am furious.
incantation
overheard in hospital
pluck the hairs
from the head
of a virgin.
sweep them into the hall.
take a needle
thin as a lash,
puncture the doorway
to her blood.
here is the magic word:
cancer.
cancer.
repeat it, she will
become her own ghost.
repeat it, she will
follow you, she will
do whatever you say.
chemotherapy
my hair is pain.
my mouth is a cave of cries.
my room is filled with white coats
shaped like God.
they are moving their fingers along
their stethoscopes.
they are testing their chemical faith.
chemicals chemicals oh mother mary
where is your living child?
she won’t ever forgive me,
the willful woman,
for not becoming a pine box
of wrinkled dust according to plan.
i can hear her repeating my dates:
1962 to 1982 or 3. mother
forgive me, mother believe
i am trying to make old bones.
the one in the next bed is dying.
mother we are all next. or next.
leukemia as dream/ritual
it is night in my room.
the woman beside me is dying.
a small girl stands
at the foot of my bed.
she is crying and carrying wine
and a wafer.
her name is the name i would have given
the daughter i would have liked to have had.
she grieves for herself and
not for the woman.
she mourns the future and
not the past.
she offers me her small communion.
i roll the wafer and wine on my tongue.
i accept my body. i accept my blood.
eat she whispers. drink and eat.
the message of jo
my body is a war
nobody is winning.
my birthdays are tired.
my blood is a white flag,
waving.
surrender,
my darling mother,
death is life.
chorus: lucille
something is growing in the strong man.
it is blooming, they say, but not a flower.
he has planted so much in me. so much.
i am not willing, gardener, to give you up to this.
the death of fred clifton
11/10/84
age 49
i seemed to be drawn
to the center of myself
leaving the edges of me
in the hands of my wife
and i saw with the most amazing
clarity
so that i had not eyes but
sight,
and, rising and turning
through my skin,
there was all around not the
shapes of things
but oh, at last, the things
themselves.
“i’m going back to my true identity”
fjc 11/84
i was ready to return
to my rightful name.
i saw it hovering near
in blazoned script
and, passing through fire,
i claimed it. here
is a box of stars
for my living wife.
tell her to scatter them
pronouncing no name.
tell her there is no deathless name
a body can pronounce.
my wife
wakes up, having forgotten.
my closet door gapes wide,
an idiot mouth, and inside
all of the teeth are missing.
she closes her eyes and weeps
toward my space in the bed, “Darling,
something has stolen your wonderful
shirts and ties.”
the message of fred clifton
i rise up from the dead before you
a nimbus of dark light
to say that the only mercy
is memory,
to say that the only hell
is regret.
singing
one singer falls but the next steps into the empty place and sings . . .
“December Day in Honolulu”
Galway Kinnell
in white america
1 i come to read them poems
i come to read them poems,
a fancy trick i do
like juggling with balls of light.
i stand, a dark spinner,
in the grange hall,
in the library, in the
&n
bsp; smaller conference room,
and toss and catch as if by magic,
my eyes bright, my mouth smiling,
my singed hands burning.
2 the history
1800’s in this town
fourteen longhouses were destroyed
by not these people here.
not these people
burned the crops and chopped down
all the peach trees.
not these people. these people
preserve peaches, even now.
3 the tour
“this was a female school.
my mother’s mother graduated
second in her class.
they were taught embroidery,
and chenille and filigree,
ladies’ learning. yes,
we have a liberal history here.”
smiling she pats my darky hand.
4 the hall
in this hall
dark women
scrubbed the aisles
between the pews
on their knees.
they could not rise
to worship.
in this hall