Anthropology

Anthropology


Their bones are so sharp they can break through their own excuses
---Jim Carroll


In the Indian Health Services Clinic, the doctor tells me the
cancer has spread into my eyes, will steal my vision, but it
hasn't grown into my bones.

"You must remember," he whispers. "You will be remembered
by the shape of your femur, fibula, scapula."

Then, I cut my skin into sixteen equal pieces, keep thirteen
buried in my backyard and feed the other three to the dogs.

I am left with my bones, the X-rays of my expectations.

The leg bones staggering home from the powwow grounds,
carrying the weight of ten thousand dreams down a basketball
court, bending deep at the knee just before the fall.

The arm bones reaching across the stick game, holding up
the thumb on every highway leading off the reservation,
bending at the elbow to hold the hydrocephalic head
off the table.

The endless ribcage, each curved bone like a story, split
open in the dust of another century; each curved bone
like a promise, picked clean and waiting for identification.

The skull, cup of sharing, filled with old water, alcohol,
spit from toothless mouths, all tasting so familiar.

Then and before, my face in the morning mirror, small bones
breaking through brown skin, my brother behind me, burning
flashbulb, filling a roll of film. The black and white photo-
graphs hidden between the pages of dictionaries, stuffed into
the pockets of old coats, taped to the walls and painted over,
secreted into the crawlspace of a HUD house.

Evidence, evidence.

Now, in the dark of the house near Benjamin Lake, I hear
digging, the slow moan of earth changing, the silence of
something taken, cold wind rushing in to fill the empty spaces.


Sherman Alexie.............from Old Shirts & New Skins