1.
The old woman sitting beside me,
She smells like my gramma.
I miss my gramma, she's
Still here but
The others demand my time.
My gramma,
Beautiful raven black hair,
Soft brown eyes,
And a smile with radiant warmth.
In my dreams,
I will go to her, to
Watch over her.
2.
In my fiction writing class,
There's an old man,
But not real old!
He must have been cute in
His youth but now is
A handsome aging man.
He sits next to me
And reads his book.
He smells familiar.
“Sweetgrass no! Sage,” I comment.
“Huh?”
“You smell of sage. You've lit some sage,”
I said with blue
Indian eyes, wise.
I return to my story writing.
“How did you know?”
Amazed.
“I have an Indian nose,
Which means an Indian knows.”
Shock.
We got back to our
Respective duties, one ignoring the other.
3.
When I sit here all alone,
On this cushioned bench,
I concentrate on
My breathing and it bothers me.
This always bothers me.
Times like this,
I wish my dad
Was sitting here beside me
Instead of asleep at home.
So
I imagined his spirit
Sitting beside me,
Rambling incoherently about sports.
Melancholy;
My infinite sadness;
The silence reminds me of
Times with my dad. Love.
4.
When I wake up; frightened
By the darkness,
It is usually because my mom is
Standing over me,
Yelling, with the lights on;
Frightened by her darkness.
5.
From the moment I wake up,
There are a million poems/stories
Floating around in my head;
I only remember about ten of them;
Only ten of them see the light of day.
6.
In my dreams,
I hear her p!ssed off voice
And in my dreams
I begin to cry because
I know I've done something wrong;
I've probably done everything wrong.
Mom's voice,
Enough to shatter night into pieces,
And I collect them
Trying to ‘make it all better.'
I am still crying when I wake up.
7.
Once, I was in the van, driving
Down Hoyt avenue (ironic)
With powwow music turned up loud.
A group of ‘caucasian' people
In a Jeep Cherokee (ironic)
Pulled up beside me, as I waited for
The red (ironic) light to
Turn green.
One man had a salish tattoo (ironic).
He rolled his
Window down
And yelled to me,
“You Indian f***ers can die!”
Offended and thrilled
For racism hurts
But at least he could
Tell I was native
(ironic).
8.
Do you look for owl feathers
In the backyard after
Its night of hooting warnings?
So you ignore him too.
9.
My grampa's smile is
Reassurance.
His jokes are usually racist
But I laugh with him,
Because, aren't we all a bit racist?
His stories of mumu are
Refreshing.
I could listen to his stories
Forever, and I would want for
Nothing more in life,
Except a loaf of stale french bread (or is it freedom bread?).
10.
Our medicine men ‘worked' on our house,
Two years ago.
They brought the ‘boards'
And chased away a frightening
Shudder within my chest.
But it has returned again.
I want to be ‘worked' on
With a fan of owl feathers,
Peyote stitch beaded handle,
Sage and sweetgrass smells
Swirling around the room.
I want my gramma
To be the medicine woman.
I want her beauty, power, and soul
To encompass my being,
To take away the ‘dreads;'
To eliminate the
Shudder.
11.
Once my aunty made macaroni that tasted like soap.
That always sticks out in my mind…I ate every last bite.
Cooking like that sticks with you for life.
12.
Time is like a medicine wheel,
Swirling us to
Remember the past,
The badness,
Forcing us to talk to others about it.
Making us feel better.
The medicine of talking,
The medicine of detoxifying our system;
Getting out the poisonous hurtful
Words that circulated with our blood;
Bad medicines.
13.
Thirteen, a bad number.
Full moon, a bad light.
Black cats, a bad animal.
All these things bad.
But Indians know nothing of these superstitions.
We use thirteen regardless of its
Notoriety.
A full moon, to us,
Is just a face staring back at us.
It's not a bad thing,
We don't reprimand it for being full.
And cats are
Just cats. Spiritual
Animals no matter their color.
These are white superstitions.
Indian superstitions are about
visions/spirits/animals/dreams
A white man
Knows nothing of these things; thinks
They are a load of ‘hoopla.'
I come from
Both sides of this spectrum,
This two colored spectrum of light.
If I judge one or the other,
I'm judging myself,
And without a jury.
14.
Someone once asked me what angered me the most.
…
“The world.”
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