The faces that are woven from this land. Ā The folded flower of a frozen teepee. Ā A cracked red hand fluttering over tall grass, rising to trace the lightning-lashed bark of ponderosas. Ā His dilapidated reservation shack leaning into an iron woodstove, full lotus in the corner. Ā On the solemn wall, a tilted picture ruddy with dust awaiting another century without touch. Ā The raven in the rock surveys the shaman in the stone; unsold land, upturned raptor talons of vigil flame, pulse of river. Ā A thunderbird drum pit. Ā The sonorous tone of his unbroken pertinacity. Ā His fire opal eye, tear-stained at the shame. Ā I understand now Lucifer in remonstrance before The Most High, refusing to bow before man. Ā The taste of his hemlock was hard, being the first martyr, having the beauty of electrum narcissus. Ā Man would later scribe eviscerated obloquy about the evils of Eve, sublimating subjugation of both woman and all other life-forms symbolized by the serpent who fed her a food tainted with truth. Ā Who was the biblicalĀ daughterĀ in the beginning? Ā And where did Lilith walk to? Ā Dominion over all other creatures was the first tyranny, the original sin, the harbinger hex, not the sacred symmetry of amatory sex. Ā Nor rebellion. Ā Arsenic in the apple seed echoes this chaos; the arc of sinās reach in Adamās apple speech. Our matriarchal Indians cultivated honor against all of this. Ā So did the innocent witch. Ā And Jesus. I wonder at the wasichu creature still, lashing the legs of a calf. Ā Crooked cowboys with crook faces of grease-encrusted stubble who brought incendiary aftermath to the last of all seraphic lodges they stumbled upon. Ā But the chief, his portent he cradled like an ember. Ā Cash money he refused, choosing instead to walk into the skeleton of austerity to fatten his spirit on the wine of the wind. Ā His grandfather gave to a stoic mother, that one day, a drink to allay her trauma. Ā But when she tried, red water sluiced forth from the bullet-hole in her throat, down the front of her quilled buckskin and wildflower bouquet, as the cavalry outside snapped the cut-out uteruses of gentle red women onto the horns of their saddles. Ā In that hour even the ghost of Amerigo Vespucci died. Ā Cha-O-Ha, hoka hey. Ā Tashunka Witko, we ride.Ā Ā Crazy Horse, you live, so rise againĀ we cried. Ā I do not stop looking in all directions. Ā I smudge myself with sage smoke now. Ā I keel in feeling to the keening of the hawk, and seek horizons of hills for the archangel wings of a war-chief headdress, genuflecting through stature and euphonious flute sound, the loess and stone lichen of buffalo blood ground.
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