Distances

DISTANCES

I’ve watched the Children of The Third World starving on television. I’ve heard the stand-up comic ask, “why didn’t the cameraman give that kid a fucking sandwich?” I know all the mothers of America have told their kids: “Clean up your plate. There are people starving in India.” When I was young, living on the reservation, eating potatoes every day of my life, my mother would tell me to “clean up your plate or your sister will get it.”

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A woman writes to a man who used to live here. I write back, pretending I’m the man she’s been searching her whole life for. “Do you still love me,” she writes to ask him, and me.

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I do not speak my native tongue. Except that is, for the dirty words. I can tell you what I think of you in two languages.

Sherman Alexie

Posted over on The Best American Poetry