Indian Sonneteer

The Unauthorized Lost Atwater Poems

"Indian is easy to fake. People have been faking it for five
hundred years. I was just better at it than most."
---Harlan Atwater

1.

Harlan

a real Spokane Indian
adopted by white parents
raised in the Spokane suburbs,
never living on the reservation
yet he needed, craved
to embrace his Indianess
his inner Indian,
so he wrote real poetry
imagined and derived from dreams,
from movies, from an indominatible spirit,
writing about his fake youth,
fake poverty, fake grandparents,
fake hubris, fake honor.

He was an Indian lost,
a poet lost
in that dark chasm
between wannabe and was,
between truth and heart;
pushing, posing, lying
until the day it became
nothing,
search ended,
lies over,
vision quest aborted;
a real Indian
who was not,
who weaved willingly
into invisibility.

Glenn Buttkus

2.

Poverty


When you're poor and hungry
And love your dog
You share food with him.
There is no love like his.
When you're poor and hungry
And your dog gets sick,
You can't afford to take him
To the veterinarian.

So you have to watch him get sicker
And cough blood and cry all night.
You can't afford to put him gently to sleep,
So your uncle comes over for free
And shoots your dog twice in the head
And buries him in the town dump.


Harlan Atwater

3.

The Little Spokane


My river is not the same size as your river.
My river is smaller and colder.
My river begins in the north
And rushes to me.
I swim it because it is water.
Water doesn't care about anybody
But this water cares about me.
Or maybe it doesn't care about me.

Maybe the river thinks I'm driftwood
Or a rubber tire or a bird or a dead dog.
Maybe the river is not a river.
Maybe the river is my father.
Maybe he is smaller and colder than your father.

Harlan Atwater Mythical Spokane Indian Poet

4.

The Naming Ceremony


No Indian ever gave me an Indian name
So I named myself.
I am Crying Shame.
I am Takes the Blame.
I am Four Directions:
South, A Little More South,
Way More South, and All The Way South.
If you are ever driving toward Mexico

and see me hitchhiking
you'll know me
from the size of my feet.
My left foot is named Self Pity
And my right foot is named Born to Lose.
But if you give me a ride, you can call me
And all my parts any name you choose.

Harlan Atwater

5.

Love Song


I have loved you during the powwow
And I have loved you during the rodeo.
I have loved you from jail
And I have loved you from Browning, Montana.
I have loved you like a drum and drummer
And I have love you like a holy man.
I have loved you with my hands.

But I haven't loved you like a scream
And I haven't loved you like a moan
And I haven't loved you like a laugh
And I haven't loved you like a sigh
And I haven't loved you like a cough
And I haven't loved you well enough.

Harlan Atwater Reservation Bard

***Harlan Atwater is another of those literary full blooded
spiritually mixed alter egos for Sherman Alexie. Alexie tried
to write Harlan's sonnets as rough hewn, sophmoric, uneven
poems, and yet for me, Sherman still shines through.
Read Harlan's full situation in Story One, THE SEARCH ENGINE, from
TEN LITTLE INDIANS by Sherman Alexie 2003