White Earth Poems

This June, I traveled to the White Earth Native American Reservation in Minnesota with my mom and a group of fantastic individuals to serve at the Hope Day Camp there. We got to see first hand some of the continuing injustices on the reservation, and better yet got to hug on and spend quality time with some kids who needed some extra love. The following are some of the poems I wrote while on the reservation.

White Earth Girls {we hold tight the haunted}

Fawn monkeys onto my back,

legs plastered to my ribs, her silver fillings

peeking through her grin, too many

for her seven years. This week

I've chewed on too many hard stories

of mothers methed-out, jailed, gone—

nonspecific death sentences for little girls,

and yet I watch these small faces uncloud

as they slide down to be caught

in my mother's endless arms,

their bandanas wild with forgetfulness.

And we hold on to this, knowing

how hard won it is for even the smallest

of the people who were burdened

with remembering

the americas before they were given

a name, before mother earth was

strung out on capitalism

and lost her will to raise us.

* * *

Jocelyn {hearts captive, we catch her gusto}

The little girl who hums herself

happy birthday knows what it is

to have a choir inside,

and her feet too know the instinct

to gallop instead of jump, that wild

horse marking, fire-bellied

and wide-eyed. She places her hand

in the cement imprint of a Native child

and tells me it's heavy, as if she's already

holding up part of this sky, this vast

air that blends right into the lakes

and presses upon us with Minnesota thickness.

This little girl, who can barely take on the stairs,

rushes to the trees, the roots, and the wood-

chipped earth, as if to ask, What's to be feared

when there is so much still to be touched?

* * *

Owls {the darkness preys over us}

The hush wings the Anishinaabe call them who sing their names

toward death from the trees and fly them Northbound to the Creator ashes

to ashes dirt to deer deer to sons and they take their daughters

from the mention of owls fearing the death omen the amen people

speak like mice over the land and outside the center where we teach

about a God who is not white and hears tobacco prayers the same

as anything said on our knees J's face is cut like a dreamcatcher

web tangled with blood and cheek muscle we didn't mean to bring

the inside to the skin it's just the spirits somehow angered it's just

the threats turned knife the owls landing where the may

the people holding their blood in their hands trying to keep alive

when there are so many talons to fear in the night.

* * *

Itasca {where all things must go south}

Walk across the stones of the Mississippi,

take off your shoes, roll up your pant legs.

We're in deep now, too soaked

in the Native tongue to forget the houses

boarded up for warmth in the winter, or

the girl dragged into the woods and raped,

or the child who smiled wide

when she got a new teddy bear because

her father's grave had been bare too long.

Take, this is our water now, hard as it may be

to hold in the reservoirs of our chests

and carry home without spilling.

Take and drink the river, dance

the rapids, and let it carry you home.

No one is getting out blind.