Many of you who know me are aware that I am pretty fixated on Sherman Alexie these days. I love his humor, his sadness, his wisdom. His books defy description, and following is a smattering of some of his poetry.
Hey I tracked down a Sherman Alexie poem:
Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World by Sherman Alexie
The morning air is all awash with angels . . .- Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call?
A plumber, Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call?
I choose my father because
He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home.
My mother answers.
"Hey, Ma, I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?"
She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year.
"Shit, Mom," I say.
"I forgot he’s dead.
I’m sorry—How did I forget?"
"It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—
And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon."
My mother laughs
At the angels
who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls
with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
Reprinted from Thrash, © 2007 by Sherman Alexie, by permission of Hanging Loose Press.
Back to Sherman, you say? Oh yeah:
Poverty of Mirrors
You wake these mornings alone and nothing
can be forgiven;
you drink the last
swallow of warm beer from the can
beside the bed,
tell the stranger sleeping
on the floor to go home.
It's too easyto be no one
with nothing to do, only
slightly worried about the light bill
more concerned with how dark day gets.
You walk alone on moist pavement wondering
what color rain is in the country.
Does the world out there revolve around rooms
without doors or windows?
Centering the mirror
you found in the trash,
walls seem closer
and you can never find the right way
out, so you open the fridge again
for a beer,
find only rancid milk and drink it
whole.
This all tastes too familar.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman
What the Orphan Inherits
Language
I dreamed I was digging your grave
with my bare heands.
I touched your face
and skin fell in thin strips to the ground
until only your tongue remained whole.
I hung it to smoke with the deer
for seven days.
It tasted thick and greasy
sinew gripped my tongue tight.
I rose
to walk naked through the fire.
I spokeEnglish.
I was not consumed.
Names
I do not have an Indian name.
The wind never spoke to my mother
when I was born.
My heart was hidden
beneath the shells of walnuts switched
back and forth.
I have to cheat to feel
the beating of drums in my chest.
Alcohol
"For bringing us the horse
we could almost forgive you
for bringing us whisky."
Time
We measure time leaning
out car windows
shattering
beer bottles off road signs.
Tradition
Indian boys
sinewy and doe-eyed
frozen in headlights.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
Would Steal Horses
For Kari
for you,
if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father,
the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born
and where he will die
sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands,
which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.
I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise
as the last lie,
the last point after which
we both refuse the exact.
I would wrap us both
in old blankets
hold every disease
tight against our skin.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
Little Big Man
I got eyes, Jack,
that can see
an ant moving along the horizon
can pull four bottles shattering
down from the sky
and recognizethe eyes
of a blind man
who told me once,
The future is yours
and I believed him
until he left me
without a campfire,
without an axe
to chop down a tree and build myself
a chair, house, cold drink.
Jack,
how much pain is there
in the world?
I think there's only one kind
and we all keep moving around it
in circles
like clumsy pioneers,
over the same ground
until the landscape becomes so familiar
we settle down
and call it home.
Seems like everybody wants to be
an Indian.
Why should you be any different, Jack?
Still,
when you rub the red dirt off your pale nose
your little insanities vanish.
Listen:
the proof is glass.
When an Indian looks through a window
it's like a mirror.
When the Indian looks
into a mirror,
it's like a window.
I know you have dreams, Jack.
We all want
an acre of land,
love, and a full stomach.
Without that,
we couldn't listen to the wind
without anger.
But I've been sitting
in a cold room
watching stars
through a hole in the roof.
That bright star to the north
doesn't have a nameI know.
Like everything else,
it will break my heart.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
And here is a little something from THE RAVEN CHRONICLES;
The Farm
by Sherman Alexie
1. Jonah
All of us,
the Indians,
know exactly where we were
when scientists announced that they had found the cure
for cancer.
I was eating lunch in the Tribal Cafe
for the third time that week and was only halfway
through my fry bread when the national news broke
into the local news: a white man in a lab coat
stood at a podium porcupined with microphones
and quietly spoke. "We have found that the bone
marrow of Indians, synthesized with a few trace
elements, form a powerful antiviral agent namedSteptoe 123.
This agent, when taken orally, will
stop the metastatic growth of tumors and kill
cancer cells.
Steptoe 123 has been 95% effectivein ten years of research under the direction
of Dr. Miles Steptoe at the Center for DiseaseControl.
We have prepared a detailed press release
which will give you more information on Steptoe123,
Dr. Steptoe, and all that you need to know
at this time.
The President, with a clear vision
of the future of Steptoe 123, has made a decision.
Therefore, under the authority of Executive Order1492,
we have closed all of the reservation borders
within the United States
and will keep them closed
to any and all unauthorized traffic until further notice."
Silence.
Then I turned to Charlie the Cook,
who was really
the dishwater.
"Jonah," he asked me. "Is it real?"
"It's real," I said.
Charlie looked at me, looked
at Agnes the Waitress, who was really the cook.
"Why is it real?" asked Charlie, but it was too late
for a history lesson.
We all needed to escape
before the borders were completely shut down.
"We've got to go," I said. "We've got to go now."
So Agnes, Charlie, and I jumped into my old car
and prayed it would save us like that famous ark
but we didn't even make it past
Cold Springs before we heard the first dissonant
music: the helicopters played ragtime as they fell
from Heaven, as one descended on us with propeller
blades that broke our hearts and windshield.
I drove the car off the road
and into a field
where everything stopped
as Sam the Indian, who
was really white, suddenly stepped onto the road
with his hands out, palms open, just inches below
that helicopter, as Charlie asked, "Where did he
come from?" I just remember Sam was whittled
to bone as the helicopter dropped down onto him.
(Did you know you can play a gospel hymn
on a flute carved from human bone?
I heardthe hymn once, in a dream, but have since learned
to play it on a hollow femur.)
The soldiers came
for us then, dragged us from the car, asked for our names
and tribal affiliations, demanded to know if the guy
killed under the helicopter was Indian or white.
"He was white," I said.
"Fully white?" a soldier asked
and I told him that Sam the Indian might be the last
fully good white man in America.
"The dead guy ain't Feeder
or Breeder," shouted the soldier.
Sam wasn't needed
because the scientists couldn't use his bone marrow
so the soldiers left Sam's body to the crows and sparrows.
"What am I?" I asked the soldier as he tied my hands behind
my back with soft cotton twine, but he did not reply.
"What am I?" I asked the soldier as they carried
me to the helicopter.
"Are you single or married?"asked a soldier.
"I'm a bag of bones," I said.
"Do you have any children," the soldier asked again
and again, but I kept telling him I was all alone
in this new world, that I was just a bag of bones.
2. Sam the Indian
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When the blades fell upon me
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
3. Charlie the Cook
After we were captured by the soldiers,
they took all of the Indians to a place called the Farm.
My history became their history.
They took notes.
They tattooed my forehead with a B for Breeder,
because I was young and pure-blood.
They keep the Breeder men and women together.
In each cell, there are five women and one man.
We are rotated often,
never allowed to develop relationships.
We are not allowed to talk.
We are never in the same cell with a member of the same tribe.
Bright lights wake us at 6 A.M.
We eat breakfast only after we procreate.
I'm supposed to have sex with five Indian women a day.
I have fathered dozens of children since this all started.
Half of my children became Breeders and stayed at the Farm,
while the other half became Feeders and were sent to the Kitchen.
The Feeders have it much worse than the Breeders.
The Feeders have their marrow taken from them.
They are hooked up to machines that suck it out.
Sometimes they survive.
Sometimes they die.
It happens to children, too.
There is no age limit.
When they need the marrow, they take it.
There's constant demand.
Each cancer patient needs a year's worth of Steptoe 123.
Late at night, in the cell,
I reach my hand out into the dark
and I feel another hand reaching out for mine.
I cannot see who I touch.
We cannot speak.
But we hold each other's hands lightly,
ready to release our grips at any moment.
4. Agnes the Waitress
When the Indian men come to me
I try to smile.
I lift my tunic
and part my legs
with as much honor
as I can manage.
I try to love the Indian men
who are forced to enter me.
It would be easy to hate them.
Some women do.
Some women refuse
to acknowledge the man's body.
Some women close their eyes
and imagine a new childhood.
Some women weep constantly.
They don't last long.
But I hold the men close
and kiss their necks.
That always surprises them.
They stare at me
and I wonder if I am beautiful.
I have forgottenwhat that means.
I cannot tell the differencebetween a beautiful man
and an ugly man
because it makes no difference.
We do not have the luxuryof such a decision.
We are Indian
and that is all that matters
though it is rumored
that white guards sneak
into bed with Indian women.
I have heard the rustling
of blankets late at night
when Indian women crawled
into bed with Indian women.
An Indian woman once kissed me
and I felt her hands on my breasts.
I reached for her, too
but the guard rushed in
and took her away.
I never saw her again.
I dream about her
though I cannot tell you
if she was beautiful.
I want to believe
my babies are beautiful
though
I have learned to let them go.
I give birth.
I heal.
I am pregnant again.
Pregnancy is the good time.
Pregnant women share a cell.
We eat well.
We are not touched.
We are allowed to speak
to the body inside our own
and pretend it is our mother,father, sister, and brother.
5. Charlie the Cook
We have developed a highly complex and subtle sign language.
Through slight gestures,
such as brushing the hair from our faces,
we can talk about the past.
The volume of a cough can change the tense of a sentence.
A woman can sit up in bed,
scratch her cheek,
stand quickly,
shuffle across the room to a water fountain,
take a big drink, swallow loudly,
and we'd all know she was telling a joke.
Indians always find a way to laugh,
though each of us laugh in a different way.
I laugh by crossing my arms.
I cry by tapping my left foot against the floor.
6. Agnes the Waitress
I try to find the soldiers beneath their masks.
I try to find the doctors behind their sorrow.
The white people never thought to ask
if we would voluntarily donate the marrow.
7. Jonah
We've been planning the revolution for years.
We have weapons and white friends,
but I fearIndians have forgotten how to survive.
It's a complicated song and dance.
Late at nightwe practice.
We pound invisible drums.
We sing
with our mouths closed.
Silence is the thing
we must learn to fear.
This is the plan.
One night, we will slip from our beds and stand
together.
We will stamp our feet in unison
and sing the same song loudly with strong lungs
and hearts.
We will sing the old songs.
Cousins, this is not where we belong.
Way, ya, hi, yo.
Way, ya, hi, yo.
Way, ya, hi, yo.
Way, ya, hi, yo.
Cousins, remember how we sang and danced back then.
During the revolution,
we will find our music again.
8. Sam the Indian
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
When I fell into Heaven
I was closer to being Indian than I had ever been before.
9. Charlie the Cook
I have not seen a black man in years.
Not a black woman.
Not a Mexican man,
though their blood is often mixed with Indians, too.
I have not seen another Indian man.
I have seen only white men and Indian women.
There are rumors.
The Indian women have refused to procreate,
and instead, they are killing the Indian men.
It would be easy.
In each cell,
five women to each man.
There are rumors.
Indian men are becoming sterile.
We have fathered too many children.
There are rumors.
The revolution is about to begin.
Indians will rise against our jailers.
We will never touch each other again.
We will allow ourselves to die as a people,
rather than live as we do now.
There are rumors.
A large army of sympathetic outsiders,
white, black, brown, and yellow,
are preparing to storm the Farm.
They will free us.
There are rumors.
All of the cancer is gone.
It has been completely destroyed.
Our jailers will soon open the doors and let us free.
They will give us medals of honor as we leave.
© The Raven Chronicles 1997
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