A Poem Written in Replication of My Father's Unfinished Novel Which He Would Read To His Children Whenever He Was Drunk

A Poem Written in Replication of My Father's Unfinished Novel
Which He Would Read to His Children Whenever He Was Drunk

Indian summer. Leaves fallen
from government trees. They remind me of sex.

My mother and father dead.
My father fell

at Okinawa, shot by a Japanese sniper.
I do not hate the Japanese. My lover is

Japanese. She reminds me of sex.
Pregnant, my mother coughed

blood into paper tissue.
She died two weeks after I was born.

Now my Japanese lover is pregnant. She whispers
stories to her stomach about a small island

in the Pacific where her father killed
an American soldier during the war.

My lover and I wonder aloud
if her father killed my father.

We shiver in the heat of it.
It reminds us of sex.

After my parents died, I lived
with my aunt, who had enough money

to send me to Catholic school. I was
the only Indian who went to Catholic school

on purpose. I learned to play piano.
I jitterbugged with Catholic girls

and their pale thighs.
They smelled like sex.

I fell in love with all of them.
I learned chord after chord. Sex.

Often, these days, I stand at the window
of my reservation home

while my Japanese lover sleeps alone
in the scattered bed. She is pregnant.

Her father and mother live
with the dead in Hiroshima.

My father and mother are also dead.
Piano. Chord after chord. Island.

That window. This window.
One Indian boy runs

blindly through the trees.
A shadow falls

over everything.
Sex. Leaf. Faith. Glass.

If I stand at this window long enough
I will see the long thread of history

float randomly through the breeze.
This is all I know about peace.


Sherman Alexie...............from One Stick Song.