Edna sets a blue clay mug and a cheese sandwich
on her desk, examines old questions.
Some pierce. Others are walls.
Are you an American Indian?
has more complicated answers than Yes or No.
Census workers used to decide someone’s race
or ancestry based on how they looked or where they lived.
Now they ask, What do you call yourself?
and make room for more than one choice.
The coming 1980 census will be the first time
no one will be asked to name the head of the family.
As if just one person should be in charge.
Edna writes questions she wants asked by people
who are more like those whose homes they may enter,
who see and hear differently than outsiders
shaped by old tales of tepees, arrows, and feathers.
She needs numbers that more truly reflect people living
in or outside reservations, in small towns or cities.
Families are more like cloth than furniture,
their boundaries not as solid as wood.