Dear New Blood

You don’t need me, I know, here on this podium with
my poem. You hunched in the back of the room,
tilted in your lean reservation lean. You ho-hum your
gaze out the window toward some other sky.

Dear new blood, dear holy dear fully mixed up
mixed down mixed in and out blood, go ahead and
kick the shit, kiss the shit from my ears. I swear I
swear I’ll listen. Stutter at stutter at me you uptown
weed you thorn you petal, aim my old flowered face
at the sky.

I know you don’t need me, here on this podium with
my poem. You pressed flat to the wall, shoulders
cocked, loaded for makwa, for old growlers like me.
You yawn your glance out the window at the
tempting sky.

Wake me. Bang my dead drum drum, clang clang my
anvil my bell. Shout me hush me your song, your
shiny impossible, your long wounded song. Tell me
everything you know, you don’t. Tell me, do you feel
conquered and occupied? Maybe I’ve forgotten. Sing
it plain, has America ever been America to you, let
you be you in your own sky?

Sing deep Chaco, deep Minneapolis, deep Standing Rock,
deep Oakland and LA. Sing deep Red Cliff, sing Chicago,
deep Acoma, deep Pine Ridge and Tahlequah. Sing and
mourn. I think you, too, were born with broken heart.
Rise. Smash your un-American throat against the edge of
thereddening sky.

(makwa: Ojibwemowin for ‘bear’)