Things (for an Indian) to Do in New York (City)

Things (for an Indian) to Do in New York (City)


1.

Walk down the Avenue of the Americas
though it's actually Sixth Avenue
and I mean walk right down the middle
of the Avenue of the Americas

and tell all the cab drivers I love them
or walk down the middle of Wycoff Street
in Brooklyn at three in the morning
waving my arms like a crazy man

because some New Yorker once told me
it will scare all of the muggers away
but I think it means those muggers
will just end up mugging and Indian

acting like a crazy man
but maybe I could make them laugh
and they'd leave me enough money
for another cannoli, cannoli, cannoli

or I might convince myself that I look more
like a mugger than one who is to be mugged
because I have deak skin, long hair
and those dark-skinned long-haired muggers
will all nod their heads at me

whenever I walk by, brother to brother
but wait, everybody is a mugger
and that white man in a wool suit
just lifted my wallet
and disappeared down the Avenue

of the Americas, which, as we all know
by now, is actually Sixth Avenue
and lucky me, he took my throw-down
wallet, which only held a twenty
and a sepia photograph of Mister X.

2.

Read Ted Berrigan's sonnets
and wonder how we are all alike
but still have absolutely nothing

in common. I stop bearded men
and beautiful women in the streets
and they're all poets. Everybody

is bearded and beautiful. Everybody
is a poet. I roll a drunk over
in a doorway and he quotes

Robert Frost. My God, he's home-
less and formalist. How much money
should I drop inside his tin cup?

3.

The whole world does not belong
in any one place but here we are

all of us gathered in Times Square
with guns drawn and teeth bared.

I want to find somebody to kill
because of their skin color. No.

I want to kill a busload of children
because of their parent's religion

and I want to build a hate machine
in the middle of Times Square

and call it a piano. I want
to start a circus in Manhattan

and call it a church. I want to hail
a mounted policeman and call him God.

4.

What time is it? I stop
a passerby in this cruel city
and ask her. It's 12:02 pm

she tells me and keeps
walking. She actually gave me
the correct time. Oh, the kindness

and I stop watch-wearer
after watch-wearer, asking
for the time and they all give it to me.

I could live here
forever. No, that's not true
at all. I'm lying

because it's nearly 1:34pm
and I have three hours to kill
before the matinee show.

5.

There is nothing as sad as a bad guitar player
in the hotel room next door at some insane hour
moving his clumsy fingers from chord to chord
until you think, in those long pauses between
B flat and F, that he must be an Indian
adopted as a young child by a white family, and now,
confused and desperate, has come to New York City
to become a rock star, but hocks his guitar
eventually for a bus ticket back home
to his white parents, who love him so much
they don't say a word about his new braids
and they all travel to a powwow together
slightly embarressed to find their feet tapping
along in an imperfect rhythm with the drums.

6.

I was looking for a happy ending
but instead found a refrigerator

abandoned on East Fifth Street.
Then I found a couch

a dining table with three chairs
and a microwave oven. I found

a lamp, a coffee table, and a television.
I found a perfect pair of shoes.

7.

I think how when I left the reservation
my entire world, which had been brown,
became white, but this is New York City and everybody
is brown, but this is America, too, and everybody
is still white, but then again, I know America
is not white exactly, but it is white inexactly,
without color, needing this or that blood
to stain its hands.

8.

On some of these days
there would be too much to do
so I don't even leave
the Brooklyn brownstone

and I'm frightened
because I'm an Indian
who knows the difference
between Monet and Manet

so I just watch TV
because I'm an American
Indian and the walk to the subway
can break both of my hearts.

9.

On TV, more soccer riots in Europe.
There would be riots in American stadiums
during our particular games
if the people who had reason to riot
could pay the price of admission.

10.

But, America, I think how
your men will always find
a more effective way to kill.

No Indian would have ever invented
and automatic bow and arrow
but I love you still

in the way I have been taught
to love you:
with fear.

11.

So how is it possible
that I could fall in love
with every waitress
and waiter in Manhattan?

Stop, I'm not in love
with any of them.
It must be the food.
But they are gorgeous

though horrible at their jobs
so when they drop
the plates and cups
it still sounds like music.

12.

Then I think to thank all of you
for Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman

for the automobile and Orson Welles
for fluoride in the drinking water.

13.

Suddenly, there's another Indian on the subway
sitting right beside me, surprise, there's an Indian
on the subway, F Train from Brooklyn
to Manhattan, on a Monday afternoon, surprise
there is another Indian, I mean, another American

Indian sitting on the subway seat next to me--
really, in the seat right beside me, our legs touch
and I'm convinced that she's Indian, Native
American, Aboriginal, beneath her clothes
and she's Indian in her clothes, and her clothes
are Indian because she's wearing them. There's
and Indian on the F Train all the way from Brooklyn
to Manhattan. She's my wife, and she loves me,
she loves me, she loves me.


Sherman Alexie......from The Summer of Black Widows