These Indians explain away their hair
between despair and beer. Two pass out
unnoticed on the floor. One answers to a cop
for children left five hours in a car.
Whatever I came here for, engagement
with the real, tomorrow’s trip to Babb,
the first words spoken ‘white man’
split my tongue. I buy a round of beer
no phonier than my money is wrong.
Whatever story, I hear between the lines
the novel no one wants. A small aunt
whipped the brave who grovels now
in puke and odd hymns at my feet.
A squaw says no help from the mountains.
The Blood who stole her husband
breaks up all day in her beer. Children
drink us in through windows ten years thick.
It never ends, this brutal way we crack
our lives across our backs. With luck
we’ll be soft derelicts. The next sun
is no softer, and I guess what good moons
must have said to them, some round white
ringing lie about the future—trout and kiss,
no ownership of sky and herds returning
fat from ritual songs. The moon outside
lights the alley to familiar hells.
And I, a Mercury outside, a credit card,
a job, a faded face—what should I do?
Go off shaggy to the mountains,
a spot remote enough to stay unloved
and die in flowers, stinking like a bear?