Postcards to Columbus

Postcards to Columbus


Beginning at the front door of the White House,
travel west for 500 years, pass through small towns
and house fires, ignore hitchhikers and stranded motorists,
until you find yourself back at the beginning of this journey,
this history and country

folded over itself like a Mobius strip. Christopher Columbus
where have you been? Lost between Laramie and San Francisco
or in the reservation HUD house, building a bettert mousetrap?
Seymour saw you shooting free throws behind the Tribal School

in a thunderstorm. Didn't you know lightning strikes the earth
800 times a second? But, Columbus, how could you ever imagine
how often our lives change? "Electricity is lighning pretending
to be permanent" and when the Indian child pushed the paper clip

into the electrical outlet, it's applied science, insane
economics of supply and demand, the completion of a twentieth
century circuit. Christopher Columbus, you are the most
successful real estate agent who ever lived, sold acres and
acres of myth, a house built on stilts

above the river salmon travel by genetic memory. Beneath the
burden of 15,000 years my tribe celebrated this country's
200th birthday by refusing to speak English and we will
honor the 500th anniversary of you invasion, Columbus,
by driving blindfolded cross-country

naming the first tree we destroy AMERICA. We'll make the
first guardrail we crash through our national symbol. Our
flag with be a white sheet stained with blood and piss.
Columbus, can you hear me
over white noise of your television set?
Can you hear ghosts of drums approaching?


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