Voices of the Rainbow

I checked out a book of contemporary American Indian poetry titled Voices of the Rainbow.  It's overdue and I didn't want to forget these highlights, so I'm posting them here.  I especially like the two by A.K. Redwing.


Two Hookers by A.K. Redwing (Lakota)

      1
reeking of unsolved crime, the cop
         pursues a flat-footed junkie
                                  into a bottomless garbage can
Following a brief exchange of animosities
                                                they emerge . . .
the cop wearing sandals and a thousand bills
       the junkie, a badge and 24 lumps

      2
                                                           two hookers
kneel in the shadow of a mafia boss . . .
           the money in their hands once
                      belonged to the pope

      3
                                                       a cosmic jury
finds the true villains of wounded knee guilty. . . .
                                        a plowshare and a reaper
                  hang at dawn-
A radio, a television set, and a bourgeois
                    prairie newspaper hang as accomplices


Written in Unbridled Repugnance Near Sioux Falls, Alabama - April 30, 1974 by A.K. Redwing

      1
As the dust from the wet dream of a nation
       settles on the tuxedoes
                of yesterday's heroes,

       a friendly hand becomes a fist

forged in elusive furnaces
       by unseen Hitlers, in ignorance. . . .

      2
While eternally sightless eyes compete
       with hopelessly deaf ears for

       the first crack at your ass,

       the beast in the living room
            winks its psychedelic orb
            at a picture of Chief Joseph. . . .

      3
Bronze statues of ancient rapists
applaud tactical squads crunching skulls

As in the dim light of humanity,

Adam weeps. . . .


Spruce by Phil George (Nez Perce--Tsimshian)

She transplanted each spruce, blue as the
Blue mountains from where they came.
Laden with child in womb, on horseback she went,
Bareback and alone--overnight.
Her floral-beaded saddlebags with fringes to hooves
Were filled with the last salmon run--smoked, sweet--
And the freshest of broiled venison.

In our little Switzerland, private and "undiscovered,"
She made an opening in the forest;
She sang in the Sun where she uprooted the tree.
She planted each spruce--one for each child--
Seven healthy trees, strong in a row.
Except one.
That was Uncle in Korea.
She knew the second he was wounded when
She detected yellow fungus on the bleeding bark.
Under Uncle's arm she slept until the telegram came.

In mourning she cut off her braids;
She planted them under the fungus--it disappeared.
She planted the telegram under his roots
Just like she planted salmon in the hole she
Dug with deer antlers when she planted each spruce.
Salmon returns to its same spawning stream
To die.

Anthropologists study our "pagan spruce worship"--
Evergreen ferns that carry Smoke Prayers eternally skyward--
And wonder . . . "Why?"
Sophisticated vultures in the shade of her spruce
Eating their lunch after picking our bones
And pulling her braids . . . laughing.

And I wonder: Why?


Land by Carroll Arnett (Cherokee)

Without this
what is
worth doing.


Sunrise by Jim Tollerud (Makah)

The old canoe in
Frost of dawn
Gray water and
Black paddle combine
The man of age
Guides the small canoe
From hemlock village
Pray to the hunt
Morning is sacred,
The mind is refreshed
The hunt for food
Brings glory to the
Warrior of knowledge