Mojave Barbie had been banned from the horse stables and was no longer invited to dinner, not since she let it slip that when the cavalry came to Fort Mojave, the Mojaves ate a few horses. It had happened, and she only let it slip after Skipper tried to force her to admit the Mojave Creation was just a myth: It’s true. I’m from Spirit Mountain, Mojave Barbie had said. No, you’re not, Skipper had argued. You came from Asia. But Mojave Barbie wasn’t missing much—they didn’t have lazy man’s bread or tortillas in the Barbie Stovetop to Tabletop Deluxe Kitchen. In fact, they only had a breakfast set, so they ate the same two sunny-side-up eggs and pancakes every meal.
Each night after dinner, Mojave Barbie sneaked from the guesthouse—next to the tennis courts and Hairtastic Salon—to rendezvous with Ken, sometimes in the collapsible Glamour Camper, but most often in the Dream Pool. She would yenni Ken all night long. (Yenni was the Mojave word for sex, explained a culturally informative booklet included in Mojave Barbie’s box, along with an authentic frybread recipe, her Certificate of Indian Blood, a casino player’s card, and a voided per capita check.) They took precautions to prevent waking others inside the Dream House—Mojave Barbie’s tan webbed hand covering Ken’s always- open mouth muffled his ejaculations.
One night, after drinking a pint of Black Velvet disguised as a bottle of suntan lotion, Ken felt especially playful. Ken was wild, wanted to sport his plastic Stetson and pleather holsters, wanted Mojave Barbie to wear her traditional outfit, still twist-tied to her box. She agreed and donned her mesquite-bark skirt and went shirtless except for strands of blue and white glass beads that hung down in coils around her neck. The single feather in her hair tickled Ken’s fancy. He begged Mojave Barbie to wrap her wide, dark hips around him in the “Mojave Death Grip,” an indigenous love maneuver that made him thankful for his double-jointed pelvis. (A Mojave Death Grip Graphic How-To Manual was once included in the culturally informative booklet, but a string of disjointed legs and a campaign by the Girl Scouts of America led to a recall.) Ken pointed his wooden six-shooter and chased her up the Dream Slide. The weight of the perfectly proportioned bodies sent the pool accessory crashing to the patio. Every light in every window painted itself on as the Dream House swung open from the middle, giving all inside a sneak peek at naked Ken’s hard body and naked Mojave Barbie gripping his pistol, both mid-yenni and dripping wet.
Ken was punished by Mattel’s higher-ups, had his tennis racket, tuxedo, Limited Edition Hummer, scuba and snorkel gear, aviator sunglasses, Harley, windjammer sailboard, his iPad and iPhone confiscated. Mojave Barbie had been caught red-handed and bare- breasted. She was being relocated—a job dealing blackjack at some California casino. On her way out the gate, she kicked the plastic cocker spaniel, which fell sideways but never pulled its tongue in or even barked—she felt an ache behind her 39 EE left breast for her rez dog, which had been discontinued long ago. Mojave Barbie tossed a trash bag filled with clothes and accessories into her primered Barbie Happy Family Volvo, which she’d bought at a yard sale. The car had hidden beneath a tarp in the Dream House driveway since she got there. She climbed through the passenger door over to the driver’s seat, an explosion of ripped vinyl, towels, and duct tape. She pumped and pumped the gas pedal, clicked and clicked the ignition, until the jalopy fired up. Mojave Barbie rolled away, her mismatched hubcaps wobbling and rattling, a book of yellow WIC coupons rustling on the dash, and a Joy Harjo tape melted in the tape deck blaring, I’m not afraid to be hungry. I’m not afraid to be full.
Mom and Dad Barbie, Grandma Barbie, Skipper, and Ken stood on the Dream House balcony and watched Mojave Barbie go. Grandma Barbie tilted at the waist whispering to Mom Barbie, They should’ve kept that one in the cupboard. Dad Barbie piped in, Yep, it’s always a gamble with those people. Mom Barbie was silent, hoping the purpling, bruise-like marks the size of mouths circling Ken’s neck were not what she thought they were: hickies, or, as the culturally informative booklet explained, a “Mojave necklace.” Skipper complained to Ken that Mojave Barbie had flipped them off as she drove out the wrought-iron gates, which, of course, locked behind her with a clang. Ken fingered the blue bead in his pocket and reassured Skipper, Mojave Barbie was probably waving goodbye—with hands like that, you can never be sure.
Reservation Grass
I keep no account with lamentation
Walt Whitman
We smoke more grass than we ever promise to plant.
Our front yards are green and brown, triangles of glass—What is the grass?—emeralds and garnets sewed like seeds in the dirt.
The shards of glass grow men bunched together—multitudes—men larger than weeds and Whitmans, leaning against the sides of houses— dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers—upon dirt not lawn.
Corned beef comes on the first of every month—this the meat of hunger— in white cans with bold black writing.
We—myself and mine—toss it in a pot and wonder how it will ever feed us all—witness and wait—but never worry, never fret, never give a damn, over mowing the grass.
What have we—the red aborigines—out of hopeful green stuff woven?
Other Small Thundering
We are born with spinning coins in place of eyes,
paid in full to ferry Charon’s narrow skiffs—
we red-cloaked captains helming dizzying fits
of sleep. Tied to the masts,
not to be driven mad by the caroling of thirsty children
or the symphony of dogs slaking hunger
by licking our ribcages like xylophones.
Our medicine bags are anchored with buffalo nickels—
sleek skulls etched by Gatlings.
How we plow and furrow the murky Styx, lovingly
digging with smooth dark oars—
like they are Grandmother’s missing legs—
a familiar throb of kneecap, shin, ankle, foot—
promising to carry us home.
A gunnysack full of tigers wrestles in our chests—
they pace, stalking our hearts, building a jail
with their stripes. Each tail a fuse. Each eye a cinder.
Chest translates to bomb.
Bomb is a song—
the drum’s shame-hollowed lament.
Burlap is no place for prayers or hands.
The reservation is no place for a jungle.
But our stomachs growl. Somewhere within us
there lies a king, and when we find him…
The snow-dim prairies are garlanded with children—
my people fancy dance circles around pyres but do not
celebrate the bodies, small, open, red as hollyhocks.
Some crawled until they came undone—
petal by petal,
striping the white field crimson.
Others lay where they first fell, enamored by the warmth
of a blanket of blood.
My dress is bluer than a sky weeping bones—
so this is the way to build a flag—
with a pretty little Springfield .45 caliber rifle.
So this is the way to sew wounds—
Yesterday is much closer than today—
a black bayonet carried between the shoulder blades
like an itch or the bud of a wing.
We’ve memorized the way a Hotchkiss can wreck a mouth.
Streetlights glow, neon gourds, electric dandelions—
blow them out!
Wish hard for orange buttes and purple canyons,
moon-hoofed horses with manes made from wars,
other small thundering.
Jimmy Eagle’s Hot Cowboy Boots Blues
On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents drove into the Jumping Bull property on the Sioux Reservation, allegedly in pursuit of Jimmy Eagle, a teen accused of stealing a pair of cowboy boots.
Jimmy Eagle, them FBI boys are just a-throbbin’ for you
since you put on them pretty red
-handed hot cowboy boots
Better hope your red pickup grows wings and flies fast
’cause Uncle Sam’s dreamin’ down Injuns in red Dakota grass
The crime’s not so much, but they don’t belong to you
What’s a wild bird like you need with whiteman shoes?
Yep, Jimbo, the feds have a warrant named “you”
Soar Jumping Bull’s golden hills, boy, and defend your coup
Jimmy Eagle, the brass is straight-lampin’ for you
They’re hot and you’re red-handed with ’em sharp cowboy boots
The crime’s not so much, but they don’t belong to you
What’s a wild bird like you need with whiteman shoes?
Now, Jimmy, they’re callin’ in cavalry ghosts of the past
Head for the stockpiled commods and arrows, man, hope that they last
Jimmy, baby, the gov’ments on your tail with a green light to shoot
worked-up ’n’ tizzied for some hot goddamn red-handed cowboy boots
The crime’s not so much, but they don’t belong to you
What’s a wild bird like you need with whiteman shoes?
Go ’head, Jimmy, stomp them new shoes, dance up the sand, make ’em flash
’cause they’re lookin’ to bury bullets in your brown barefoot ass
The Facts of Art
woven plaque basket with sunflower design, Hopi, Arizona, before 1935
from an American Indian basketry exhibit in
Portsmouth, Virginia
The Arizona highway sailed across the desert—
a gray battleship drawing a black wake,
halting at the foot of the orange mesa,
unwilling to go around.
Hopi men and women—brown, and small, and claylike
—peered down from their tabletops at yellow tractors, water trucks,
and white men blistered with sun—red as fire ants—towing
sunscreen-slathered wives in glinting Airstream trailers
in caravans behind them.
Elders knew these BIA roads were bad medicine—knew too
that young men listen less and less, and these young Hopi men
needed work, hence set aside their tools, blocks of cottonwood root
and half-finished Koshari the clown katsinas, then
signed on with the Department of Transportation,
were hired to stab drills deep into the earth’s thick red flesh
on First Mesa, drive giant sparking blades across the mesas’ faces,
run the drill bits so deep they smoked, bearding all the Hopi men
in white—Bad spirits, said the Elders—
The blades caught fire, burned out— Ma’saw is angry, the Elders said.
New blades were flown in by helicopter. While Elders dreamed
their arms and legs had been cleaved off and their torsos were flung
over the edge of a dinner table, the young Hopi men went
back to work cutting the land into large chunks of rust.
Nobody noticed at first—not the white workers,
not the Indian workers—but in the mounds of dismantled mesa,
among the clods and piles of sand,
lay the small gray bowls of babies’ skulls.
Not until they climbed to the bottom did they see
the silvered bones glinting from the freshly sliced dirt-and-rock wall—
a mausoleum mosaic, a sick tapestry: the tiny remains
roused from death’s dusty cradle, cut in half, cracked,
wrapped in time-tattered scraps of blankets.
Let’s call it a day, the white foreman said.
That night, all the Indian workers got sad-drunk—got sick
—while Elders sank to their kivas in prayer. Next morning,
as dawn festered on the horizon, state workers scaled the mesas,
knocked at the doors of pueblos that had them, hollered
into those without them,
demanding the Hopi men come back to work—then begging them—
then buying them whiskey—begging again—finally sending their white
wives up the dangerous trail etched into the steep sides
to buy baskets from Hopi wives and grandmothers
as a sign of treaty.
When that didn’t work, the state workers called the Indians lazy,
sent their sunhat-wearing wives back up to buy more baskets—
katsinas too—then called the Hopis good-for-nothings,
before begging them back once more.
We’ll try again in the morning, the foreman said.
But the Indian workers never returned—
The BIA’s and DOT’s calls to work went unanswered,
as the fevered Hopis stayed huddled inside.
The small bones half-buried in the crevices of mesa—
in the once-holy darkness of silent earth and always-night—
smiled or sighed beneath the moonlight, while white women
in Airstream trailers wrote letters home
praising their husbands’ patience, describing the lazy savages:
such squalor in their stone and plaster homes—cobs of corn stacked
floor to ceiling against crumbling walls—their devilish ceremonies
and the barbaric way they buried their babies,
oh, and those beautiful, beautiful baskets.
Prayers or Oubliettes
1
Despair has a loose daughter.
I lay with her and read the body’s bones
like stories. I can tell you the year-long myth
of her hips, how I numbered stars,
the abacus of her mouth.
2
The sheets are berserk with wind’s riddling.
All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts
at my table. Their breasts rest on plates
like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at.
Instead of grace, we rattle forks
in our empty bowls.
3
We are the muezzins of the desert
crying out like mockers from memory’s
violet towers. We scour the earth
as Isis did. Fall is forever here—
women’s dresses wrinkle
on the ground, men fall to their knees
in heaps, genitals rotting like spent fruit—
even our roots fall from the soil.
4
The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark.
5
Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue.
The taste of a thousand moths is chalk.
The mottled wings are the words to pain.
6
We have no mazel tov.
We call out for our mothers
with empty wine jugs at our heels.
The Clouds Are Buffalo Limping toward Jesus
II
My Brother at 3 A.M.
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said. O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.
He wants to kill me, he told her,
looking over his shoulder.
3 a.m. and in her nightgown, Dad asleep,
What’s going on? she asked. Who wants to kill you?
He looked over his shoulder.
The devil does. Look at him, over there.
She asked, What are you on? Who wants to kill you?
The sky wasn’t black or blue but the green of a dying night.
The devil, look at him, over there.
He pointed to the corner house.
The sky wasn’t black or blue but the dying green of night.